Frame and Fortune

by Misty Simon

  Gently—or at least I tried for gently—I pried her fingers off my bicep. Man, did she have some talons. Once I got her to let go, I grabbed her face to hold it still. Her eyes continued to roll all over the place. She looked like she was about to have a heart attack. I wondered briefly if I should slap her like you always see people get slapped in movies when they’re out of their head. But I figured I wouldn’t get thanked for that, so I decided to hold onto her for another second while the wailing outside grew louder.

  “We are not going to try to clean this up. We’re going to let the police take care of it. You’ve done nothing wrong, Bella. Relax.” I bored my stare into her eyes, willing her to calm down. It wasn’t going to help any if she was hysterical when the police finally got here. The sirens were slowly growing louder from the street. Were they driving two miles per hour? They should have arrived already.

  A crash and a bang accompanied someone forcing their way into the already unlocked shop. What the hell?

  “What the hell?” Bella shouted, eerily echoing my thoughts. We were going to have to talk about her tendency toward mind reading, at some point. Obviously, it wasn’t going to happen right now. A deputy was standing over Bella as she lay on the floor, pointing a gun right into her face.

  I put my hand on the floor, trying to push myself up from the linoleum, but got a gun in my face, too, for my trouble. Okay, then, I’d just sit right back down.

  A major commotion started right outside the front door. Someone yelled, then another thud was heard and Jared came bounding into the front of Bella’s shop bellowing like a bull in full fighting force.

  Wow. I could totally see how she thought Jared was the cat’s meow. If it weren’t for Ben, I’d crawl right up this he-man’s leg.

  “Get away from her, you bastard,” Jared roared, pushing the deputy with the gun out of the way and kneeling down next to Bella in two smooth moves. He cradled the back of her head and lifted her slightly, bending down so he could put his mouth close to her ear.

  “Just lie here. I’m going to take care of everything. I won’t let them take you away again.”

  I didn’t think I was meant to hear what he was saying until he turned his head slightly to wink at me. Finally, he’d chosen her over his job. It should have been a moment of triumph, but we still had the bloody towels to contend with. I didn’t think it was going to go as easily as Jared was making out.

  ****

  Back at her house later, Bella was waltzing around her kitchen. “Isn’t he lovely? Isn’t he wonderful?”

  “Isn’t that a song?” Ben asked from his place at the table.

  I nudged him, shaking my head slightly. He was not going to ruin her mood now that I had finally gotten her over being afraid of going back to jail. Apparently, she looked awful in bright orange while highlighted by the fluorescent overheads. Personally, I didn’t believe that would be my main concern if I were in jail, but I suppose to each his, or her, own.

  “He tramped in there like he owned the place and told those guys off.” She hummed under her breath. “And he was so manly.” She heavily emphasized the last word. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

  Ben didn’t have the same restraint. For his indiscretion, he got snapped with a kitchen towel. “What?” Like he was really that clueless.

  Bella let the towel hang at her side with her hands on her hips. “At least he stood up for me this time instead of being the one to put cuffs on me. The bad kind.” She winked at me over her wide smile.

  Okay, way too much information. We needed to get back on this investigation. My dad had already called three times today. I’d managed to avoid him, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do it for much longer. He was going to interfere if I couldn’t wrap things up quickly here.

  Which reminded me. I pulled the pocket watch out of my, ha, pocket and put it down on the table in front of me. I waited for Bella to notice it. When she did, her hum cut off in mid-hum.

  “Where did you get that?” She threw the towel onto the counter and stalked over to the table. “Where did you get this, Ivy?”

  The fierce light in her eyes would have scared me if I didn’t know she was on my side and was as innocent as I was. “I found it at Trev’s. I take it you recognize it?”

  I had thought it would be too much to hope for, but the look on Bella’s face told me I had been right on target.

  “This was Jackson’s. I gave it to him on our first anniversary. You found it at Trev’s?” She reached out her fingers to touch it.

  I put my hand over the timepiece right before she made contact. “I don’t want your fingerprints on there. Mine I can explain, but I don’t want to mess with yours.”

  Her eyes widened. “Do you know what this means? We have to call the police back right now. They have to take this and look at someone besides me.”

  “I also overheard Jackson saying that once his old lady kicked the bucket, he could get some money. Do you know if her dying was imminent?” Good word, sorry circumstances.

  The baffled look on her face did nothing for my squiggly insides. “Jackson’s mom has been dead for two years.”

  Then maybe he was talking about… But that was too horrible to contemplate. Wasn’t it? “Could he have been talking about…you?” I dreaded saying the words, but the idea wouldn’t let go.

  “Well, I don’t have to worry about that now, do I?” she said fiercely as tears came to her eyes.

  Ben put a hand on her arm. “You knew he was a treacherous bastard, sweetie.”

  She didn’t shake him off, though it looked like she wanted to. “Yeah, well. This just adds another layer to his scumminess. Personally, I don’t care who killed him, but I still have to clear my own name.”

  If what we thought was right, I would have to figure out how those towels had gotten into Bella’s shop when Jackson was already dead. Life was never simple.

  ****

  I snuck into the coffee shop’s office and studied Detective Bartley’s back before announcing my presence. I hoped she would do the right thing. Although she’d shown she was willing to think outside the box sometimes, especially by coming to me again, I still didn’t know how much she trusted me. But I’d found out Carrie, the owner, was Bartley’s sister. Someone related to a kitchen goddess couldn’t be all bad, right?

  When I cleared my throat, she whipped around.

  “Don’t scare me like that,” she said.

  I was simply glad she hadn’t pulled the gun currently making a bulge on her back and didn’t have its snub nose up against mine.

  Note to self: do not ever sneak up on a detective, or any police person. Bad, bad idea. I’d seen my life flash before my eyes. It was decidedly lacking in a few departments.

  “The condition of the body pretty much confirms Trev was not killed at the shop.” She held up her hand when I opened my mouth to say duh. “I’m aware you never thought it was. We hadn’t found blood there, either, but we had to be sure. Now we are. We’re also over at Trev’s apartment looking for blood there. He might have been killed in his home and then moved.”

  Again, duh. But I held it in. I had a feeling my sentiment would not be welcomed. Instead, I took the watch out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Bella confirmed this is the watch she gave Jackson for an anniversary.” And how sad it must have been for her to stare at it and see the death of that marriage all over again.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “At Trev’s.”

  “And you didn’t bring it to me immediately? I thought that had been the purpose of me giving you the key.” She stomped around the room, running a hand through her red hair. “What else have you found that you aren’t sharing with me?”

  I thought that was pretty rich, coming from her, but then really, what could I say? She was with the police; I was merely a nosy busybody.

  “I don’t have anything else. Ben said he got some numbers from Trev’s place and was going to check out his finances. My understanding is Tr
ev had a lot more money than he was supposed to, and Jackson had been looking for money. Maybe they were in on some kind of deal that went bad.” I shrugged but went on when she didn’t say anything. “And you mentioned another guy was looking for him earlier this week, saying he owed him money. I overheard Jackson talking about getting a windfall to pay someone after his old lady kicked it. Bella said his mom was already dead, so we assume he had something up his sleeve to kill Bella, too, eventually. Two and two is four. Could it all be about the money? Some kind of scam?”

  She stared at me. While she took her time looking me over, another thought popped into my mind. Could the frame thing be a scam, too? But I shunted that aside. I might get answers to that this afternoon. Perhaps an explanation from the person who wanted to buy all my excess picture frames.

  Instead, I concentrated on the detective, watching her face flush. “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said, turning her back on me, again.

  “It’s not ‘nothing’ if you’re blushing like that. What?”

  “There’s no need to worry about the guy looking for Trev. I already took care of him.”

  “How and why?” Pretty soon I’d be through all the English questions my old teacher had pounded into my head. And I wanted answers, since I had done quite a bit of legwork and was getting nothing back.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “I’d rather we did.”

  Her eyes went slitty, but I stood my ground. I’d done the whole investigating thing without knowing what the hell was really going on. I had no intention of experiencing that horror ever again. She could tell me, or I could just walk out the door and not help her anymore. Of course, I told myself that, but I really wasn’t going to leave Bella dangling.

  “I said I took care of it.”

  “And I will say, again, that I’m not operating this way. I want answers, and I want them now. I’m not going to run around blind anymore, if you know something I need to know.” I had a feeling I might have gone too far over the line, but I’d said it (how cool was that?) and I wouldn’t back down now.

  She huffed out a breath and tried to give me the beady eye again. I’m very happy to report it wasn’t working on me. Woo-hoo!

  “Fine.” She threw herself into a chair, then waved her hand at the other one.

  I sat, too, leaning in toward her as I expected to hear they’d had their eye on Trev for running drugs or laundering money.

  What I didn’t expect was, “Trev wrote romance novels on the side, under the name Mary Trevors.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “And then she said he’s been writing romance for the last several years under his pen name.” I couldn’t believe it, even as I said it. Mary Trevors was one of my very favorite authors in the whole wide world. She told her stories with such emotional depth. Her quirky sense of humor hit me right in my funny bone. No more Beckington stories to look forward to. No more family stories that made me laugh and made me cry. If I could bring Jackson back to life, I’d do it just to kill him again for taking away my all-time favorite author. Thoughts of the notebook I’d found in Trev’s house surfaced, and I vowed to look at it again once I was done here. I might have the last work from my favorite author sitting in my backpack.

  “I can’t believe it, although that does explain the page of numbers I found in the second bedroom. Must have been his royalty statement. It might have been sappy crap, but it sure was paying well,” Ben said, shaking his head and scratching his chin at the same time. “Trev was such a man’s man, how could he write all that sappy crap? Unbelievable.”

  “You already said that. And it wasn’t sappy crap. It was good, wonderful fiction about life, and love, and the sacrifices one makes for the relationship.” Like the ones I was making. Sure, Ben had the lawn mowed when I came home and something very delicious-smelling bubbling in the crockpot. But I’d also found a ton of dirty socks on the bedroom floor. Add them to the stone cold load of laundry in the washer that smelled a little musty when I went to put my own laundry into it, and you had major sacrifice. He said it was because I had a more awesome setup than the coin-operated deal in the basement of his building, but come on! At least move the clothes into the dryer before they had to be washed again.

  I had sent him down the hall to start his laundry for the second time. When he came back, I told him about the romance-writing thing. You’ve already seen his reaction. Yeesh!

  “And you said you had your own dirty secret when you confessed your love of gardening and wanted to get your hands in my dirt.” I sat back in my chair with my hands tucked around my waist.

  “But that’s gardening, not sissy romance writing.” He blew out a breath, shaking his head.

  “We’re not going to agree on this, so let’s move forward.” I wasn’t going to convince him that romance was a wonderful way to escape reality. I also didn’t want to hear him disparage it anymore.

  “But romance?”

  “Let it go.” I gave him the Evil Eye. “I bet you secretly read my romances when you’re taking your bubble baths, and you’re just saying these things on principle.” I barely contained my giggle when his whole face went red. But I moved on. We had more important things to discuss than the fact that I was most likely right. Although I did make a mental note to catch him at his romance reading at some point so I could poke the finger at him next time.

  “Anyway.”

  “Yes, anyway,” I said, tapping a finger on the kitchen table and humming to myself at the same time. It was the tune Bella had been humming earlier, but it wasn’t helping, so I stopped. “We have about an hour until your frame buyer is here. We need to make strides before he comes.”

  “Well, what do we have? If those towels were put in Bella’s bin after Jackson was dead, then maybe he didn’t kill Trev in the first place.” He raised the one eyebrow that still made me want to lick it.

  I shook my head. Of course, he took the gesture wrong.

  “What? I think it’s a workable theory.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Then why were you shaking your head?”

  I blew out a breath as the other eyebrow winged up. I sure wished I could master my eyebrows that way. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with what we were talking about now. No, what we had going on was much more serious. If we didn’t figure this out soon, I was afraid more people would die. But what was the connection between Jackson and Trev, other than having grown up in the same town? When I’d considered the idea Trev was running a scam, I thought they’d had something in common. But at this point there was not a lot linking them together. And why would Jackson have killed Trev?

  I blew out another breath, this one in frustration. “Okay, we need to do a little more digging. Can you go over to where Jackson was staying and see if you can get in, or at least find out what the police have?” I looked up at his grunt. I hated when he grunted. “What?”

  “I wanted to be here when you did the transaction with the frame guy. I don’t think you should be alone.”

  “And I don’t think we both need to be here. This is getting worse, Ben, and we need to find the killer. It’s bad enough we’ve had all these deaths around here in the last year or so. We can’t have a serial killer on our hands.”

  “Okay. Okay. I understand.”

  And if he didn’t look like a pouting little child, I didn’t know what did. I patted him on the arm, then got up when he did. “I’ll be fine. I promise I’ll watch myself. My dad said he was coming over in about thirty minutes to watch out for me, too.”

  “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing,” he said grudgingly as he kicked the leg of the table.

  He was being a big baby, but I wasn’t going to point that out to him at this time. I needed him to do some checking for me and didn’t want his resentment to ride along with him.

  ****

  The sun sank quietly into the trees behind my small property. The man who wanted to buy my frames was ten minutes late, b
ut since I didn’t have much else to do, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to stay out by the garage for another five or ten minutes hoping he showed up. If I could get this frame thing cleared up for Ben, then maybe we could fully concentrate on catching a killer before he killed again.

  “Excuse me,” said a creaky voice behind me, making me nearly jump out of my skin. I did whip around, however, and found myself face to balding head with a slightly stooped man who had to be somewhere in his early seventies. I looked up and down the street to see if my frame man was on his way, but I didn’t see anyone else around.

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” I asked. If the man wanted to use my bathroom or something, I might have to decline, Martha’s Point hospitality or no. Plus, my dad was inside my room, peeking out at the garage with binoculars. I couldn’t allow anyone in, just in case.

  “I’m here to see someone about picture frames they have for sale? Are you the lady I’m looking for?” He peered at me, then scrutinized a piece of paper in his splotchy, bony hand. “Seems to be the right address.”

  This was the guy? This man who looked a little like a waif? Then again, to be fair, a lot of people looked waif-like compared to me.

  “Um, yeah, that’s me. Did you want to come in for a cup of coffee, or something?”

  “No, no, that’s okay.” He patted my hand. “I just wanted to see the frames, and then I’ll get out of your hair.” He shot me a beatific smile. (Nice word.)

  I walked him across the grass, chatting at him. Not my forte, but I felt I should at least try. Ben and I had specifically gone to the craft store down the road and bought pretty much every single frame they had. I’d stacked them against the wall after taking off most of the price tags. I’d even collected a few from the people around my house who hadn’t been hit yet.