The Root of All Trouble

by Heather Webber

  The Root of all Trouble

  A Nina Quinn Mystery

  Heather Webber

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, locations, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not construed to be real.

  The Root of All Trouble

  Copyright 2013 Heather Webber

  www.heatherwebber.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, except for brief quotations used in articles or reviews, without permission from the publisher.

  Chapter One

  Thou, Nina Colette Ceceri Quinn, from now on will heed severe weather warnings despite the complete unreliability of local meteorologists.

  Black clouds loomed overhead and hail pounded my truck as I took a left out of my office's parking lot. The self-important weatherman on Channel 13 had been gleeful this morning as he warned about possible thunderstorms, straight-line winds, and tornadoes.

  I hadn't believed him. Mostly because he'd been warning of the same thing for the past two weeks and nothing had come from it except for a few sprinkles.

  Late springtime in this area was, as a rule, unpredictable.

  I'd lived in Freedom, Ohio, a growing suburb just north of Cincinnati, nearly my whole life and had been affected by truly severe weather only a couple of times.

  But after seeing those telltale clouds, I vowed to never take the forecast of impending doom lightly again. Once a commandment, always a commandment.

  "Pouting doesn't become you," I said to my employee Jean-Claude Reaux.

  His car was in the shop, and he was hitching a ride with me to meet up with his cousins—whose construction company happened to be working across the street from my house.

  I regretted making the offer of riding with me.

  Sitting in the passenger seat with his arms crossed over his chest, he flexed his muscles in an attempt to cheer himself up. "Don't talk crazy, Nina. Everything becomes me."

  "Silly me," I teased at his serious tone.

  This storm was shaping up to be one of the worst I'd seen. I sent all my employees at Taken by Surprise, Garden Designs home when the hail started. Even though we weren't working an outdoor jobsite today, I didn't want to take chances with the weather and their safety.

  Plus, it was Friday, and we'd all been more than ready to go home. We'd been in planning meetings all day for our upcoming makeover of my new neighbors' back yard, which was to take place this weekend. All-day meetings felt like a special form of torture, especially with my colorful crew. Don't get me wrong. I loved my formerly felonious employees, but there was only so much a girl could take before I felt the need to escape. Far, far away.

  The early dismissal had come at the perfect time. Tension had been rising inside the office thanks to some good-natured ribbing gone wrong, and it was good to send everyone home before a fight broke out.

  I didn't do well with bloodshed.

  I'd seen a lot of it, too, over the past year, with all those homicide cases I'd been caught up in. I'd become a bit of a dead-body magnet. It wasn't a label I was proud of.

  At the heart of the office tension was Jean-Claude and Kit Pipe, another long-time employee. Jean-Claude didn't like people teasing him—especially where his family was concerned, and Kit just couldn't help himself from poking fun—especially when there was such an easy target.

  All it had taken was one crack from Kit and the rest of my employees had joined in, perfectly demonstrating a pack mentality. Jean-Claude should have known better than to take the joking personally, but he'd been on edge lately, and I hoped that didn't mean he was harboring a guilty conscience about some sneaky scheme or another. He was forever cooking up new schemes.

  Shooting me a dirty look, Jean-Claude went back to flexing. He'd worked for me for years now, having come to my company the way most of my employees did: through my cousin, Analise Bertoli, whose job title had just changed. She used to be a county probation officer, but now she was a "correctional treatment specialist," a designation she had embraced so whole-heartedly that she promptly ordered new business cards.

  Speaking of Ana...I peeked in the rearview mirror, and saw Kit, my second-in-command, driving behind me in his big bad Hummer. He and Ana had been dating for a while now and were quite serious. He'd been pressuring her to move in with him, but she was holding out for an engagement ring before that kind of commitment. I wished he'd hurry up and ask. I liked the two of them together. A lot. It made perfect sense that Kit was following me so closely—he lived directly across the street from my small bungalow and was on his way home as well.

  Thunder cracked overhead, and as much as I wanted to press the gas pedal to the floorboard, I forced myself to creep down the road. Water covered the asphalt, obscuring any dividing line, and visibility was only a few feet in front of the truck. What seemed like every piece of litter in the county flew by the windshield, Wizard of Oz style. I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to see Miss Gulch on her bike whizz past. It was that kind of storm.

  Glancing in the mirror, I noticed the dark circles under my muddy green eyes, and if those weren't bad enough, the rain had wreaked havoc with my hair. Strands of light brown stuck out every which way.

  At nearly two in the afternoon the sky was as dark as night. Fast-moving clouds hugged the ground, murky fingers dipping low, swirling into funnel shapes. All it would take was one to touch the ground, and a tornado would be born.

  Chewing the inside of my cheek, I worried about my sixteen-year-old stepson Riley, who was still in school this time of day—it was the last week of classes before summer break. The school wouldn't release the kids into this mess, so that was reassuring, but I would have felt better if he was home.

  Though, really, the location of his "home" was as murky as the swirling clouds. Technically, he lived with my ex-husband Kevin, but he spent a lot of time at my house in the Mill, an older, settled neighborhood of Freedom also known as the Gossip Mill.

  I'd also been seeing a lot of Kevin—mostly because he went out of his way to see me. He wasn't quite wooing me, trying to win me back, but he was walking that line, testing those waters.

  I didn't know what to think about that, so I tried not to. Most of the time. Hardly ever, really.

  Okay, I'd been obsessing.

  Sue me.

  I pushed the gas pedal down a little more and tried to keep my mind occupied with something else, anything else, other than this storm. "You shouldn't be so sensitive," I said. "You know how they are."

  "They" being my other employees. They were a crazy lot, but I loved them all like family.

  Jean-Claude's wavy hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. "I take talk of my family seriously. We have a reputation to uphold."

  I gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on the road so I wouldn't laugh. Jean-Claude's family was one step removed from the Sopranos.

  All right, they weren't that bad. Most of them, like Jean-Claude, were reformed. But the criminal tendencies were still there, underneath the pretty surfaces.

  "This is all your fault," he said to me.

  "How so?" I asked, lifting my foot off the gas as the truck started to hydroplane. Almost home, almost home. I let out a breath of relief as I felt the tires grip the road.

  "They're your friends. You got me into this."

  He wasn't referring to the other employees, though I did consider most of them friends. He meant Perry Owens and Mario Gibbens. I'd met the couple last year on the set of a reality TV show (long story), and Perry and I hit it off right away. Mario was still warming up to me—mostly because he considere
d me a bad influence on his partner.

  Sheesh. Funny how a few murder cases could affect a reputation.

  They'd recently moved out of the city and into my neighborhood. The Mill, once a geriatric demographic, was slowly turning more urban as younger people moved in and, well, the older people...died.

  Some not from natural causes (also a long story—or stories, I should say).

  Right around Christmastime, there had been a murder in the neighborhood. The house where it occurred had sat empty for months. The bank foreclosed, and Perry and Mario decided it was the perfect chance to put down roots in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

  It helped that they bought the place for a fraction of its worth, because the murder had scared away all the other (sane) buyers. Perry and Mario had moved in a month ago and had immediately started demolition. When they found themselves over their heads with the construction, they decided to hire help who promised up and down that the job would be done in two weeks.

  "Whoa now," I said. "I believe you were the one who recommended your cousin's company as a contractor. I recall I tried to talk you out of it."

  I'd tried to talk Perry and Mario out of it, too. But in this economy, they couldn't turn down Reaux Construction's bargain basement bid on the job. Work had started two weeks ago, and was supposed to be completed at the end of this week.

  They were nowhere near done.

  None of them could say I didn't warn them that hiring the company was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. They were Reauxs, after all.

  I hadn't been the least bit surprised by the delays or when, just two days ago, the company's lothario foreman, Joey Miller, went out for "lunch" and never came back. I thought the company, owned by Jean-Claude's cousins Delphine and Plum, was better off without the guy. He'd given me the heebies.

  The cousins were why Jean-Claude was in his current snit.

  There hadn't been a day since that Jean-Claude wasn't teased by his coworkers about his colorful kin. Delphine and Plum were...interesting. Everyone in my office had gotten to know them well because Perry and Mario's yard was the one we were making over this weekend. Our paths crossed a lot as my crew took measurements and worked up a design plan for the yard.

  Ordinarily, Taken by Surprise specialized in surprise garden makeovers, but I could never turn down a friend in need of a backyard makeover—and Perry and Mario were in desperate need. Winter—not to mention the bank's neglect—hadn't been kind to their yard, not that it had ever been well-maintained.

  I slowed to a stop at a red light and watched the traffic signal bounce in the wind. Rain slashed the windows, hail pounded, and I spotted trees uprooted all along the street. My pulse pounded in my ears and my palms began to sweat.

  Jean-Claude gave up on flexing. "Just because my cousins look the way they do, dress the way they do, and talk the way they do doesn't mean that they can't get the job done. They and the rest of the crew will be done in no time."

  Riiiiight. "Name one thing that's been completed there this week."

  Wind buffeted the truck as I turned left, into the Mill. Trees were down in here, too, along with power lines. I steered the truck around broken branches.

  His lips puckered. "Delphine and Plum are getting the lay of the land, a feel for the job, the energy of the house. Plus," he said, "Delphine can't find her favorite hammer and she's paralyzed without it."

  "That's a bit dramatic. A hammer is a hammer."

  He scoffed. "Said like a layman."

  My calluses begged to differ, but I didn't want to argue.

  "And their crew?" The ragtag group had been on the job since the beginning.

  "They're just following orders." He shrugged.

  I waited for him to realize this "method" wasn't normal, but he said nothing. Instead, he stared sullenly out the window. His mood was starting to get to me.

  Fortunately, I had to tolerate only a few minutes more of Jean-Claude's poutiness before I could be rid of him, leaving him in the care of his capable cousins. I had big plans for the next hour or so that involved a flashlight, a roll of cookie dough, a storm radio, and an interior closet.

  Cars and construction trucks lined the road as I neared Mario and Perry's house to drop off Jean-Claude. I pulled into the driveway and parked behind a big Dumpster. A bolt of lightning flashed and thunder quickly followed.

  "What's going on there?" Jean-Claude asked.

  A crowd had gathered in the back yard, getting soaked to the bone. "Looks like that ash tree finally came down." I'd been worried about that tree and warned Perry that it should be cut down before it fell down and possibly hurt someone or something, but he liked its height and the shade offered from its uppermost canopy.

  No one listened to me anymore.

  Luckily, the tree hadn't fallen on the house. It looked to have hit the ground and split in half, revealing its rotten innards. There was quite the gathering around its base. Delphine, Plum and their crew were there, along with Perry, my neighbor Mr. Cabrera, and several other neighbors as well.

  All but Delphine were getting soaked (she had an umbrella), and didn't seem to have a care in the world about the weather.

  Perry glanced over his shoulder, saw my truck idling, and waved for me to come over.

  He was a hairdresser by trade, and I had to wonder if he'd sniffed too many chemicals. He'd clearly lost his mind if he thought I was going out there with all that lightning.

  I shook my head.

  He waved again, more insistently. Mr. Cabrera joined in.

  "You better go," Jean-Claude urged.

  He was a fine one to volunteer me. "How about you go?"

  "No way. Do you know what that rain will do to my hair?"

  I gritted my teeth and threw the truck into park. Wishing I had a sweatshirt, I gave an oblivious Jean-Claude the Ceceri Evil Eye and hopped out into the rain.

  Water dripped down my face as I sprinted toward Perry.

  Above the wailing wind, I picked up another sound. At first I thought it was the tornado siren, but no...it was a regular siren and growing closer.

  I glanced over my shoulder as a police car pulled up to the curb. Jean-Claude slunk in his seat, and I had to wonder if it was just a natural instinct on his part or if he'd gotten himself into trouble lately.

  Perry reached out and grabbed my arm. "What kind of neighborhood is this?"

  Now he was asking that question? The murders here hadn't tipped him off earlier?

  "What's going on?" I asked, fearing the tree had fallen on someone.

  "Take a look, Miz Quinn." Mr. Cabrera's eyes were alight with excitement. There was nothing he liked more than a little hubbub in the neighborhood.

  Leaning around him, I blinked at the sight before me—the sight that had captured everyone's attention. The broken tree had revealed something else besides its rotten core.

  I moved in for a closer look at the upper half of a body that had partially fallen out of the broken trunk. I swallowed hard as I recognized the man.

  Joey Miller had been found.

  Chapter Two

  "This is all your fault, Miz Quinn," Mr. Cabrera said, trying his best to give me his own form of an evil eye.

  With his bushy white eyebrows snapped downward in a furry v-shape, he couldn't quite pull off the look. In fact, he looked so much like a Muppet that it was hard to take him seriously. He'd put on weight over the last few months, thanks to his girlfriend Ursula "Brickhouse" Krauss practically living with him and cooking his meals, and his cheeks had rounded out along with his belly. Both were jiggling, and the tummy wiggle made the pink flamingoes on his lime-green button-down appear to be doing the mamba. A pair of sensible khaki Bermuda shorts and leather sandals completed his outfit.

  We stood in Perry and Mario's kitchen, staring out the sliding patio doors watching the goings-on of the police as they searched the yard. Rain continued to pour down. "How is this my fault?"

  He threw a glance at Perry, who was rummaging through moving boxes searc
hing for the hard liquor. I wasn't surprised that it hadn't been unpacked yet. Even though Mario and he liked the hooch more than anyone I knew (besides my mother and me), they didn't drink when they were counting calories. Now that it was bathing suit season they were constantly counting. I didn't know for sure, but I suspected Mario owned a Speedo or two.

  Mr. Cabrera jabbed a finger in my direction. "This neighborhood has gone to seed since you moved in. Then your friends moved in. And now your friends are continuing your homicidal traditions. Next thing I know one of your family members will move into the house for sale next door to you and find a body in the basement."

  "Homicidal traditions? I didn't commit any homicides...yet," I said, eyeing his chest like it had a big target on it. "And no one I know wants to move into that house. It's haunted."

  The home, once owned by a granny panty thief, had been unable to hold a tenant for longer than a few weeks at a time. This was the fifth time it was for sale in a year.

  "Everyone knows you're cursed," Mr. Cabrera pointed out, ignoring my jibe. "Apparently your friends are as well."

  "Hey now," Perry said, pulling a pout.

  He'd recently had some lip injections, so his pout was quite something.

  "I'm hurt. Cut to the soul," Perry said dramatically. "I might die right here on the spot. Oh, wait. Is this spot already taken? Is this where Mr. Cabrera's girlfriend bit the dust last Christmas?" He blinked innocently, his gray-green eyes sparkling. "It seems to me I heard that Nina wasn't the only one around here who is cursed."

  Folding his arms across his chest, Mr. Cabrera harrumphed.

  "Perry has a good point," I said, finger-combing my wet hair. "Most of the deaths in this neighborhood have belonged to your lady friends."

  Mr. Cabrera's curse involved his lady loves who tended to, ah, expire while dating him. Some by natural causes and some...not. This curse was why Brickhouse Krauss kept breaking up with him every few months—she was staying one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.

  Technically, the woman who died in this house wasn't Mr. Cabrera's girlfriend at the time, but he'd been wooing her in hopes of making Brickhouse jealous, therefore the death was attributed to his curse.