Laura Bishop Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Grace Topping

  “Don’t worry about it. It was worth it for the entertainment value. Did you learn anything worthwhile?”

  “Just the reason why Damian came to Louiston,” Nita said.

  “I don’t think this was our finest hour.”

  As we drove home, I pondered what we’d learned. I needed to see Monica again to find out what she could tell me about Garrett Fletcher.

  Chapter 29

  Colors can evoke different emotions. Warm colors can make a house feel cozy and inviting while cool colors can provide a sense of calm and relaxation.

  That afternoon, I found myself again standing in front of the police station, facing a meeting with Monica. I didn’t want to visit her again, and the thought of it caused my stomach to clench. But I felt I should give her an update on what Nita and I had been doing related to her business and tell her about the memorial service for Damian Reynolds. Sister Madeleine would expect that of me at the very least. When would I ever learn to resist helping people or simply saying no? I also hoped Monica could tell me something about Garrett Fletcher and Edward Albertson.

  I climbed the granite steps into the police station with as much enthusiasm as a novice hiker starting up Mt. Kilimanjaro. The trek up the stairs could be just as dangerous, recalling my collision there with Detective Spangler. I carefully looked for anyone coming around the corner at the landing.

  I’d arranged the visit in advance, so Monica knew I was coming. After checking in and showing my ID card, I took a seat and waited to be called. Following my visits there with Tyrone in the spring and now with Monica, the waiting room was becoming all too familiar. Any more visits and the authorities would be issuing me a frequent visitor card.

  When Monica appeared on the other side of the glass divider, I took my seat in front of her. She didn’t look any more pleased to see me than I was to see her, and we sat staring at each other. It had to be mortifying for her to be seen like this and know that her business rested in my hands.

  I decided to be the better person and break the ice. “You’re looking well.” I knew that sounded inane, but I didn’t want to ask her how she was doing. What could I expect her to say: “I’m doing great, how are you?”

  Monica ran her fingers through her hair. “I’d look a lot better if you could smuggle me in some hair dye.”

  I laughed. “And get jailed for smuggling contraband?”

  “If I’m here much longer, I’ll end up a brunette.” Monica sighed deeply, as though she’d brought the exhaled breath all the way from her toes. “And to think I had such lovely blond hair while growing up.”

  What could I say? If we couldn’t discover who’d killed Damian, she could be coming out of prison someday, if she ever got out at all, with white hair.

  Monica sat up straighter, possibly to shake off the same thought. “But you didn’t come here to talk about my hair. Why did you come?”

  “Maybe to console you that your business isn’t falling apart—yet.” I filled her in on my meetings with her young assistant and all that Nita and I had been doing to help meet deadlines. “The Greens were quite pleased with how the apartment over their garage turned out. It will be a terrific short-term rental.”

  “That was a cute space and one begging to be used. I’m glad they were pleased.”

  I contemplated asking Monica about her move into home staging and the things that had been happening to sabotage my business and then decided against it. The incidences had stopped once she had been arrested, so I could only assume she’d been responsible for them. Nothing would be gained by confronting her about them now.

  Abruptly, Monica’s eyes welled with tears. “Why do things have to change? Damian and I were doing so well together.”

  That I couldn’t answer. Damian and Ian couldn’t have anticipated the abrupt changes in their lives. That thought made me think.

  “Did you know Ian Becker?”

  “Ian Becker? Wasn’t he the man who was murdered a few days before Damian?”

  “Yes. The one Nita discovered at the funeral home. He used to spend summers in Louiston with his aunt—his last stay was about twenty years ago.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t recall anybody by that name. Why?”

  “It’s just so strange that both Damian and Ian had been stabbed in the back. With you being found with Damian, the police have no reason to suspect the same person committed both murders. If we could find a link between the two murders, perhaps we can discover who killed Damian.”

  Monica’s face broke out in a wide smile. “You finally believe I’m not guilty of stabbing Damian.”

  “I’m not going to go that far,” I said. “But if you didn’t kill Damian, the only way to prove you are innocent is to find out who did.”

  “Does that mean you’re investigating again?” Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “Let’s just say that I’m asking questions.” I didn’t want to give her false hope.

  “You helped Tyrone—maybe you can help me.”

  Monica must have become desperate for her to look at me as the solution to her situation.

  “What can you tell me about Damian’s agent?” I asked.

  “Garrett Fletcher? I didn’t like the man, and he didn’t like me.” Now that was a big surprise.

  “I heard he and Damian had a heated argument while they were staying at the B&B. Did you know about that?”

  “No, but it got to the point where they were arguing quite a bit, so that doesn’t surprise me. Garrett represented Damian from the time his work started gaining recognition. He was quite controlling, and Damian let him get away with it. That is until he moved here and we started seeing each other. Garrett saw me as a threat to their relationship.”

  “Do you think Garrett had any reason to want Damian dead?”

  “I didn’t like the man, but I really can’t see him killing Damian, even in anger. He would be really foolish to do so since Damian was his most successful client.”

  “Could Garrett have been cheating Damian?”

  Monica shrugged. “I don’t know. But since you said Damian had consigned some of his art collection to Josh’s business, something had to account for his financial problems.”

  “It could be as Garrett said—Damian stopped painting. That would have started drying up a major source of his income. You don’t make a fortune teaching at a small college.”

  Monica’s forehead furrowed as though deep in thought. “Damian didn’t say much about it, but I got the impression the divorce settlement with his ex-wife was huge. That could have taken a bigger toll on his finances than he expected.”

  “Do you have any reason to think there might have been anything between Garrett and Helen Reynolds?”

  Monica eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know. I never met her, and Damian didn’t say anything about that. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to consider anything that could have a bearing on Damian’s death—even if farfetched.”

  Monica seemed to mull that over but didn’t add anything more.

  “What about Professor Albertson at the college? Do you know anything about bad feelings he harbored about Damian?”

  “Are you talking about that old story about Damian being involved with Edward Albertson’s wife?”

  I shrugged.

  “Damian said he was surprised to discover Edward Albertson was a member of the Fischer faculty. He’d known him from somewhere else—I don’t remember where. Edward was pretty unpleasant to Damian when we saw him at functions. When I asked him about it, he said Edward long ago had accused him of being involved with his wife. Damian denied it.” Monica laughed. “After seeing Phyllis, I believed him.” Typical Monica.

  I didn’t mention the photo I had seen of Damian with the Albertsons. Monica was probably as gullible as I was occasionally, wanting to believe him.

&nb
sp; Time to change the subject. “I also came today because I thought you might like to hear about Damian’s memorial service.”

  Monica nodded slowly, so I went on. “Nita and I attended the service. The chapel at Hendricks Funeral Home was filled to capacity. Family and friends talked about his school days and how hard he’d worked to get a foothold in the art world.”

  Monica dabbed at her eyes that were starting to fill with tears again. “Did anyone mention that Damian’s father had been angry he didn’t go into engineering and join his firm? He predicted Damian would become a starving artist.” Monica paused. “I wish his father had lived long enough to see how successful Damian had become.”

  “It was a moving service,” I said.

  When Monica’s chin began to tremble, I decided it was a good time to leave.

  As I walked away, I heard a faint “Thank you.”

  Now that I’d gotten Monica’s hopes up, how was I going to deliver on finding out who’d killed Damian?

  Chapter 30

  New stainless steel appliances will scream new kitchen.

  The next morning, Aunt Kit sat at the kitchen table while I prepared breakfast for us, wholegrain pancakes with ground almonds. While I cooked, I filled Aunt Kit in about my meeting with Monica.

  “I don’t know if there is any hope for her,” Aunt Kit said, shaking her head.

  I worried about the same thing. After serving Aunt Kit, I took two pancakes and poured a small amount of maple syrup over them, skipping the butter in an attempt to eat somewhat healthy. I took a bite, enjoying the crunch the almonds provided.

  “What do you have planned for today?” I asked Aunt Kit.

  “Anne Williamson and I are going to see an art display in the lobby of the medical center. They are supposed to have some nice pieces done by local artists.” Aunt Kit dug into her pancakes. She enjoyed anything that resembled dessert.

  “You and Anne have been spending a fair amount of time together.” I reached for more maple syrup, thinking I should have added the butter.

  “It’s nice sharing my interest in art with someone close to my age—someone who can understand where I’m coming from.”

  My sense of guilt for not spending more time with Aunt Kit during her visit made me cringe. Could her statement have been aimed at me? “Why don’t you stay longer so we can visit some of the places you haven’t been to for a while.”

  “That would be nice. What about you? Do you have a place to stage today?

  Just then, I heard a knock on the door and went to answer it, finding Nita standing there with an arm full of folders and a laptop. We had planned to work on several things that morning, including updating our webpage. We decided we would have far fewer distractions at my place than at Vocaro’s.

  A surprise to us both, Nita had turned out to be a wiz with the technological things that were supposed to help us with our business. I was thankful that she had taken right to it since the devices that were supposed to save us time took far too much of our time. With my background in IT, I could have handled it but was happy not having to.

  “Hey, Nita. You’re just in time for breakfast.”

  “You fixed breakfast? That’s a new one.” Nita put her things down.

  “It’s a special treat for Aunt Kit.”

  Aunt Kit called from the kitchen. “Nita, I’m glad you’re here. Laura and I have been talking about Monica’s situation.” Situation was definitely a euphemism or polite way of saying she was in jail and accused of murder.

  When we reached the kitchen, Nita hugged Aunt Kit and then leaned over to pet Inky. He had positioned himself under the table ready to snatch a piece of bacon if someone, namely Nita or Aunt Kit, offered it to him.

  After Nita sat down, I handed her a plate of hot pancakes and bacon I took from a warm oven. She accepted it with relish. Everyone seemed to love pancakes.

  Sitting down again, I eyed my now-cold breakfast. “I was about to tell Aunt Kit about my visit to see Monica yesterday and that we haven’t discovered anything that could remotely help her. It’s so frustrating. With us finding her over Damian’s body, it’s hard to prove someone else could have killed him.

  Nita poured syrup liberally over her warm pancakes. “Sister Madeleine will be happy if we can discover anything that could point to someone other than Monica. She truly believes Monica is innocent.”

  “Let’s think about it.” Aunt Kit seemed to be mulling it over as she put English breakfast tea into a warmed teapot, poured boiling water over it from the electric kettle, put the lid on the teapot, and covered it with a tea cozy to keep it warm. She was a stickler for making sure the tea was made properly. “Doesn’t anyone think it’s strange there were two murders in town within a few days of each other—both murdered similarly. Monica looks pretty guilty about the one, but is there anything connecting her to the other?”

  I shrugged. “Monica said she didn’t know Ian. I don’t know much about him myself. Poor guy. He comes to town to settle his aunt’s estate, which we all assumed to be a modest one, and then is murdered. For all we know, his aunt could have been the millionaire next door no one suspects of having any money.”

  “Could that have been the case?” Aunt Kit sounded almost envious. I wondered again about how she was doing. Could she be having financial troubles?

  “You never know,” Nita said. “She could have been left a fortune by her parents and never spent much of it.”

  “Let’s be realistic.” I reached for the last piece of bacon that I wasn’t going to share with Inky. “It would be somewhat improbable that the motive for Ian’s death was related to a huge inheritance. But even if she had been as rich as Andrew Carnegie, who in town could benefit from Ian’s death? Ian didn’t have any other connections here other than his aunt and a few friends he hadn’t seen in twenty years—Warren being one of them. It’s unlikely anyone here would have benefitted from his death.”

  “Maybe someone from New Zealand followed him here and murdered him,” Aunt Kit said.

  Nita and I both laughed at that one. Aunt Kit, like Will Parker, enjoyed bizarre mysteries that were way out there. Next she would be on the lookout for a Chinese man to show up as a surprise suspect as they often did in movies from the 1930s—a device used so often that Ronald Knox in his Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction admonished writers not to use it.

  “Don’t you think it was suspicious that Ian was murdered in Warren’s funeral home?” Aunt Kit added. She loved conspiracy theories.

  “I don’t suspect Warren of killing someone he hasn’t seen in twenty years.” But I’d been wrong in my judgment of people before. In Warren’s case, I hoped not. “Warren would have been more likely to bore him to death telling him every detail about his upcoming stage production than to have stabbed him.”

  Aunt Kit reached over and took another pancake, which surprised me since she usually ate so little. “Who else might have known Ian was in town—or would have remembered him for that matter?”

  “Remember what my cousin Neil said about one of the calls on Ian’s phone records being to an old girlfriend? Maybe the girlfriend is worth looking into.”

  Aunt Kit pondered that for a minute. Being a real fan of mysteries, she loved trying to solve the puzzles they presented. Perhaps I had inherited my sense of inquisitiveness after all. “I still think the police should continue looking at what could’ve connected Damian and Ian. Something they may have had in common?” Aunt Kit shared her piece of bacon with Inky.

  “They both stayed at the B&B,” I said. “But at different times.”

  Aunt Kit’s frown told me I wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

  “Okay, let’s consider this,” I said. “Damian was about ten years older than Ian. Before coming to Louiston, Damian lived in California, Ian in New Zealand. To the best of my knowledge, neither had been in Louiston at the same time until re
cently. Damian was an artist and was teaching at the college. I don’t know what Ian did for a living, but we probably could find out.”

  Aunt Kit sat up abruptly. “Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “What?” Nita was wide-eyed and anticipating a revelation.

  “Art,” Aunt Kit said.

  “I never heard Ian was an artist,” I said. That was something else I needed to check into.

  “No, but his aunt was.” Aunt Kit waved her fork at us as if for emphasis. “Maybe it’s far-fetched and a pretty weak link, but so far that’s the only link between the two men.”

  That was a real stretch, but I didn’t want to tell Aunt Kit that. She looked as satisfied as if she’d just uncovered the solution to a major case and delivered it to Perry Mason in the courtroom herself.

  Aunt Kit poured us cups of the brewed tea, which I was more than ready for. “All I’m saying is think about that connection,” she said.

  “I will, I will. But if we are going to look into Ian Becker’s death, it might be important to talk to the old girlfriend he called.”

  “And don’t forget his aunt’s attorney,” Aunt Kit added. “He could be hiding the money she left.”

  “No, that won’t be the case.” Nita put down her cup abruptly. “Her attorney was my cousin Ted. He wouldn’t steal from anyone. You don’t know Ted. He is so straitlaced the family is still surprised he didn’t go into the priesthood.”

  Aunt Kit was adamant. “I still think you need to look at the art link.”

  Maybe Nita and I should turn our search for information over to Aunt Kit.

  Nita nodded. “We should look for who might inherit Doris Becker’s money since Ian is no longer around. Maybe someone else was named in the will.”

  “You have to see the will,” Aunt Kit said.

  “I wish I knew how we could do that.” I refilled everyone’s teacups and sat back down.

  “Let me think about it.” Nita scrunched up her face in thought. “I may have a way we can find out.”