Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 03 - Buyer's Remorse

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “Sure,” Alice said. Lara didn’t look happy in the picture. Alice turned it face down on her palm. She wanted to remember Lara as a happy person, but it wasn’t true.

  “Lara was hot and smart. I couldn’t just give her up, but I should have. Trish was always there for me.”

  Alice turned away. She didn’t like to think of this man cheating on Lara. It was disgusting.

  “Lara’s dead, man. I should just shut myself up for a while but I can’t. Not with a woman like Trish around for me. I don’t know how to explain it, right? But you were Lara’s friend so you’d know. You knew her. She was a hard woman. Hard to please.”

  “Yeah. She was.” It was frustrating, but Hector was right. Lara had been hard to please. She had been demanding and rigid. But she had worked hard and played hard and had a wicked sense of humor. “Did Lara know about Trish?”

  “I doubt it. I doubt she would have cared either. So long as I didn’t spend any money on Trish.”

  Alice faked a little laugh, “Yeah, I know it. Was Trish ever jealous? It’s got to be hard to love two women.”

  “Trish don’t got a jealous bone in her body. She takes what she can get and that’s enough. Now she can have it all.”

  “So you’re a one woman man now?”

  “Trish is number one, anyway,” Hector said.

  “Nice,” Alice muttered.

  “No one’s perfect, babe. Least of all me. Lara knew it. Trish knows it. Whatever. I gotta get some work done.” Hector walked to the door. “It’s good to see you, Alice. Don’t be a stranger.”

  “Does Trish need a new best friend? I could use some comfort too.”

  Hector chuckled. “You call her. You never know what Trish is up for.”

  She left, him shaking his head and laughing. She had failed to get a confession or even a clue from him. She didn’t get the sense that he knew anything either. If Trish had killed in a fit of jealousy, Alice was sure that Hector did not know a thing about it.

  There was still a chance Trish had done it. Alice decided it wasn’t too early to hit the bar. Alice had been out drinking with Hector and Lara at the pub where Trish worked, but she was pretty sure Trish wouldn’t recognize her.

  She drove across town to the pub. It was open for lunch but not busy yet. Alice grabbed a stool at the bar. She was relieved to see Trish working the counter. Her black ponytail was stuffed into a hairnet, and her work shirt was a size too small.

  “What can I getcha?” Trish asked.

  Alice smiled, “Can I get an Irish coffee?”

  “Sure.” Trish turned away to make the drink.

  That gave Alice a moment to think. She wanted to hear what Trish thought about Lara. That was all. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Trish brought the mug of spiked coffee back to Alice. Alice leaned in. “Did you hear about that murder?” she asked.

  “Which one?” Trish said.

  “The one at the condo. The girl that got killed worked at a store I do business with.”

  “Lara,” Trish said with a nod. “Yeah, my boyfriend used to date her. He’s pretty broken up.”

  Alice took a drink. “Is that weird for you?”

  “Nah. I get it. He loved her and now she’s dead. Anyone would be broken up about it.”

  “Did you know her? She was kind of a friend of mine. I’ve never known someone who got murdered before.”

  “I’d met her.” Trish put another patron’s receipt in a small vinyl folder and walked to the end of the bar. She picked up a damp towel while she was down there and wiped the counter clean as she made her way back to Alice.

  “Do you think it was a random murder?” Alice asked when Trish was in front of her again. She swirled her coffee in her mug for a moment and then looked up at Trish.

  “Are they ever? Someone must have had a reason to kill her.” Trish paused her wiping and looked up at Alice.

  Alice watched her face for signs of emotion but saw none. None at all. Her face was a study in calm.

  “She was kind of difficult to work with, but I still can’t think of why someone would kill her.”

  Trish shrugged. “Some people have really dark secrets, you know? We may never know what she had been mixed up in.”

  Another customer took a stool at the bar and Trish walked over to take his order.

  Either Trish was a murderer and a complete sociopath or she hadn’t done it and really didn’t care much about it. Alice finished her coffee and left with an empty feeling inside.

  Instead of helping find justice for a friend, she had listened to Hector disparage Lara and talk easily about infidelity and moving on. Alice’s stomach turned at the thought. She went straight home. She knew she could design some really beautiful gothic clothing in this mood.

  Tormented by restlessness Mitzy had gone to Alonzo’s jobsite, but spending the day in his work trailer was going to drive Mitzy crazy. She couldn’t sit around doing nothing. Even if there wasn’t a murder to solve.

  She only had one thing left to search for. She typed the Idaho address from the label into Google and pulled up a map. First she zoomed in close and saw it was a very rural area. No surprise. Then she zoomed out, looking to get the bigger picture. She stopped midway and squinted.

  A green swath of land was marked BLM forest. She’d heard stories before about BLM land. A lot of people made free with BLM land to raise a very expensive crop. One you’d hide in a shoe if you needed to mail it. She switched to bird’s eye view and zoomed close again. There were no close up images of the forestland.

  She dragged her finger across the laptop mouse until she was right in front of the address listed. It was a huge A-frame house on a quiet road. This was where the Idaho designer lived, but Mitzy didn’t get it. The shoes and accessories Mitzy had seen hadn’t been all that hot. If Fiona was going to break her commitment to local design, Mitzy thought she ought to have picked something worth the trouble.

  The house was set back a way from the road. The front was practically a wall of glass. She zoomed in a little closer. Instead of curtains the house had a rebel flag. She sucked in her breath. The land around the house was overgrown. There was a very expensive truck parked in front. There was money at that house. Money and anger and no interest in landscaping.

  Mitzy wanted to know what was growing in the forest. If she went there and found the crops that gave Fiona the cash to pay “bonuses” to her employees, she’d be well on her way to securing the motive behind the murder. She zoomed in on the house. She wouldn’t want the people who lived there to catch her on their land, that was for sure. But was she any safer staying in Portland?

  Mitzy switched the maps program over to driving directions, plugged her current location in, and then sent the map to the printer.

  She searched the work site for Alonzo but couldn’t find him.

  She toyed with the idea of putting extra effort into finding him. She could call him or find one of the guys with a walkie and get a hold of him. And then what? Then, Mitzy knew, he would tell her she was crazy and stop her from driving across the state today. She shut down her computer, folded it and put it into her Birken bag. Then she picked the driving directions off the printer. If she left now she could make it to the address from the box, take some pictures of what she suspected was growing on the BLM land, grab a nap and make it home tomorrow. It sounded like a much better way to spend her time than sitting in the trailer. She assumed she’d be perfectly safe, so long as the murderer stayed in Portland.

  She dug her phone out of her purse. She knew the smart thing would be to let someone know where she was going. After dialing Alonzo and then deleting the numbers, she picked Joan. She let a sigh of relief escape when she got Joan’s voicemail.

  “If anyone asks, I’m headed to Idaho. I’ll be back tomorrow. You know the address I’m going to.” She hung up and smiled. Now she had something worthwhile to do.

  After getting in the car but before she drove off she checked her purse. She had plenty of cas
h and her cell phone, conveniently with camera. She had a water bottle and a tank of gas. She revved her engine, grinned, and left.

  Alonzo checked his watch. It was time to hook up with Mitzy. She was driving him crazy with her boredom. Taking some time away from selling houses had been a stupid idea. If she had some work to do…he stopped his train of thought. If she had some work to do she’d be all over town with who knows who. Until they found out who killed Lara and who was threatening Mitzy he’d rather just put up with her bored whining.

  He was almost to the trailer when he saw the flash of red pull up to the driveway. He squinted. The Miata hit the road with a squeal. He ran for his pickup, got in and followed her. She was about a couple of blocks ahead but stopped at a light when Alonzo pulled into the street. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed her number. No answer.

  Where does she think she’s going? He asked himself. She pulled down a side road and he was able to get a few cars behind her. He hit redial. Why would she not answer his call?

  Mitzy only had a few stops planned for her cross state trip. At her first stop, around dinnertime, she would call Alonzo. She would let him know she was safe. In her plan she’d drive through the night, pull into town in the morning, grab a bite and find the address. She’d hunt the BLM land until she found what she was looking for. She’d get the pictures and then get back to town.

  She debated staying in Boise. It would be easy to hide there, but she decided to stick close to the address she had—Magic Valley. That way she could get in and out.

  Drive one night, hunt one day, and sleep it off in some nice hotel. Then drive home with evidence that Fiona was smuggling drugs through her dress shop. A little evidence would go a long way, she hoped. If the shipments were drugs, then the bonuses were pay offs for silence or sales commissions on the drugs, and that would easily explain the money. With marijuana closing in on $300 an ounce according to Mitzy’s morning of googling, Fiona could easily move enough product to keep the employees in the pink. Since Lara had been an employee of Fiona’s for six years she had time to save up that big down payment.

  Crossing Oregon on Interstate 84 was one of the most beautiful trips Mitzy had ever made. The views in the Columbia River Gorge were rivaled only by the parts of New Zealand she’d seen in The Lord of the Rings movies. But once she hit The Dalles and was on the other side of the Cascade Mountains she really felt the beauty of the landscape. The land was open and the skies were clear. Somewhere far behind her was a killer, and he had no idea where she was. The relief was palpable.

  The dismal winter rains were behind her as well. She was in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, the high desert, she had heard it called. The hillsides across the river looked hard and cold, their grasses bleached white in the season. The tops of the rolling hills were crusted with snow. But even in December the sun was shining, and the sunlight through the windshield warmed her face.

  She had been saying for weeks that she needed to get away. Her instinct had been right. The blue skies, the snow in the distance, even the sun itself was working its holiday magic. Her shoulders were relaxed and her fears were floating away. Whatever she was going to find in the woods near Magic Valley, Idaho, was going to save her.

  Once she was out of town and over the Cascade Mountains Mitzy had expected to have the roads to herself. But she didn’t. It was evidence of an exploding population, or of the northern migration of Californians. It was evidence of something. There were just a lot of cars. She was still an hour from her first stop though, so she hit play on her tape deck and sat back in her seat. A little old school DC Talk would get her through the next hour of driving.

  It felt good to be flying down the highway toward the answers. But one question still loomed large, if the drugs were somehow behind the murder, what had Lara done to get herself killed?

  She slowed down through some construction and checked all of her mirrors. A few cars back she could see a big vehicle. The sun was setting so whatever was driving behind her was backlit and she couldn’t tell much about it. But she felt like that same silhouette had been in the background since Portland. Everyone drove big cars in Eastern Oregon though. It had to be a coincidence.

  Alonzo was a only a couple of cars behind Mitzy when his gas light came on. The open road lay in front of him, looking endless. He checked the clock, checked his review, checked his phone for messages. He checked anything he could think of to ignore the gas light. But he couldn’t change it. He could go about ten miles on the fumes. The last gas station he had seen was about 15 miles behind him. “Okay Lord,” he said aloud, “Mitzy is headed who knows where and I really don’t know why. Please keep track of her and get me some gas.” It wasn’t the humblest prayer he had ever said, but it was heartfelt. If something happened to her while he was dead on the road or pulled over getting gas he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

  “Don’t go there.” He spoke aloud again, trying to give his fear back to God. “She’s in God’s hands.” He tried to believe it, and he tried to believe he’d pass a gas station in the next ten miles.

  He hated to do it, despite his continued praying and his real desire to trust God, but he pulled into Arlington to get gas. He filled his tank up and hoped one tank would get him wherever they were going.

  Mitzy’s Miata was long gone when he made it back to the highway. The road before him was long and straight and there was only one way to go. He decided to keep his eye on gas stations in the hopes of catching up with her.

  Alice had a legitimate reason to go into the back office at the dress shop. It was time to get her next order, but her stomach was a complete mess as she went to Neveah’s Wardrobe. She opened the door and tried to smile as naturally as possible. She owed it to Lara and to Mitzy to see what she could find.

  “Hey Renata,” she said. Renata continued to stack the shelves that lined the walls. She nodded but didn’t say anything. “Is Fiona in?” Alice gripped the shoulder strap of her purse with one hand to keep from shaking.

  Renata sighed and rolled her eyes. “She left an order for you in the office. She stepped out for some coffee.”

  “Thanks. I’ll go in for it. Do you know if she wanted to talk about the order today? Make any custom requests?”

  Renata turned and scowled at Alice. “I’m not her secretary. Ask her yourself.”

  Alice nodded and went into the office. She kept her purse slung across her shoulder and looked for the month’s order. She should get that in hand first. The paper she was looking for was on the desk. Alice read it. Fiona was making a very small order this time. One more reason to think business wasn’t hopping. She folded the paper in half and put it in her purse. Usually, if the order was that small it meant Fiona had custom requests to make. Alice’s stomach lurched. She didn’t want to stay and talk about custom work today.

  Fiona’s purse was on the floor. Using the cuff of her coat to keep her fingerprints off the purse handle, Alice picked it up and set it on the desk in front of her.

  Alice opened Fiona’s purse, her heart quaking in her chest. She thought it must be loud enough to hear. She held the open purse up to the desk lamp but was careful not to touch anything inside. She shifted the purse so that the contents slid around a little.

  Dust coated the interior. Grayish powder clung to the satin lining. Something made a clunk-clunk sound as she shifted the purse back and forth. With one eye to the office door Alice pulled a tissue out of the box and pinched it in her hand. She put her hand in the purse and moved things around so she could see better. There were three pieces of broken ceramic in the purse. They looked glazed and greenish in color. Each piece had a finished edge and a broken edge.

  It looked an awful lot like the broken platter Mitzy had told her about. Alice put the bag down on the desk, the top opened beneath the desk light. She shoved the tissue in her pocket and pulled out her phone. She took pictures of the contents of the purse. If Fiona was leaving threatening messages for Mitzy then Fiona must be the m
urderer. The office door swung open and Fiona came in, her palazzo pants swinging around her legs. Her shawl cut sweater hung almost to her knees. Her eyes were red rimmed and sad until she saw the purse on her desk.

  “What have we here?” she whispered to Alice.

  “Excuse me, Fiona,” Alice said as loudly as she could. She stood up; her own purse clutched to her chest and pushed her way past Fiona. She swung the door open and continued in her loudest voice, “I’ve got to get going now Fiona. I’ve got your next order. If you need anything else, just message me.”

  Fiona followed her into the store, her scarlet lips pursed in an unhappy frown. “There’s no one but us here, darling. And the place is all locked up.”

  Alice, phone still in her hand, dialed 911 as quickly, as she could, hoping she didn’t draw notice to herself.

  Fiona walked around Alice so she was between her and the front doors. She reached out her elegant hand and drew the curtains closed. “Were you poking into my purse sweetie? Because that’s just not good manners.”

  Alice saw beads of sweat breaking out on Fiona’s forehead. “Of course not. Why would I do that?”

  “To lift my wallet? To steal my identity? I don’t know what would make a sweet young girl like you start a life of crime. But I’m awful glad you’ve called the cops. I’d like to press charges for the theft.” Fiona’s red-rimmed eyes were large and innocent, but her cheeks were flushed and her jaw was tense.

  “What theft, Fiona? What do you mean?”

  Fiona smiled. She sauntered over to Alice, hips swaying. When she was so close it was all Alice could do to keep from brushing against her, Fiona unclasped the Rolex that was glittering on her wrist, dangled it for a moment and the let it fall into the little gap at the top of Alice’s bag. “That theft, my dear. I just don’t know what makes young girls like you go bad.”