“I’ll pay you,” Mona said.
“Still no.”
“I’ll pay you a lot of money.”
“No means no, Mona.”
She opened her leopard print tote and withdrew a glittery pink notepad and matching pen. She wrote something down, ripped off the paper, folded it, and slid it across my desk, her long red nails pressed into the paper.
“Mona.”
“Just open it, Watson.”
I rolled my eyes and lifted the note from the table, flipping it open.
$10,000.
My throat closed up. That was a lot of money. A lot of money that could help put food in our bellies, keep my business open for another couple of months while I figured out how to draw in new clients…
The possibilities streaked through my mind. The thought of a much brighter future rose, but I squashed it back down, crumpled the note and dropped it into my wastepaper basket. “Not interested.”
“Oh, come on!” Mona threw up her hands. “I know you need the money. What is it, Watson? You want more? I can give you more.” She scribbled down another number, her hand trembling, then tore off the note and threw it at me. “How about that? Half today, right now, when you accept the case, and half once you solve it.”
$15,000.
I swallowed.
In the corner, Aggy’s eyes were wide. Her stomach groaned, loudly, right on cue, and I shut my eyes for a second.
Liam. Focus on Liam.
But this was beyond difficult. If I didn’t get involved, I would lose everything, and if I did decide to help Mona, I would save my business, myself, my cat, and my cousin from hunger. I’d also annoy my friends—Missi would not be happy if she found out—and betray my boyfriend, who had specifically asked me to stay out of it.
You can’t do that to him.
If I didn’t, it was over for me. For Aggy. How could I protect her from her father’s enemies if I couldn’t even feed her or myself?
“Face it, Watson,” Mona said, her tone icy cold, “we need each other, whether we like it or not. I need you to prove that I wasn’t the one who killed that idiot, Emma Carte. And you need my money.”
I opened my eyes and stared at the beast before me. Work with Mona Jonah? Help her prove her innocence?
“No,” I said. “I won’t help you prove that you didn’t do it. But I’ll take the case.”
Aggy let out a breath in the corner.
I lifted a finger before Mona could say a word. “I’ll take it, and I’ll find out who actually killed her, whether that’s you or someone else. Do you accept those terms?”
Mona sniffed, glaring down her nose at me. “Fine. It doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t touch the idiot.”
“Lesson one, Mona,” I said. “Don’t call the victim an idiot. It doesn’t exactly make you seem innocent.”
“Don’t antagonize me,” she replied. “I’m working with you out of sheer desperation.”
“Ditto.” I inhaled through my nose, sorting through what I needed for the case. “I’m going to need a few things from you before we begin. First, your story about where you were at the time of the murder.”
“Easy. I was on my way home from the paper. I had just been fired and replaced by that… woman.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re learning.”
Mona fiddled with her tote, and I made a note of the nervous behavior.
“Second, I need you to keep this quiet. A secret. I don’t want the police finding out, certainly not Liam, and definitely not anyone else in Sleepy Creek who doesn’t need to know.”
“Suits me,” Mona replied. “Do you really think I want people knowing I’m working with the likes of you?”
I ignored the jab. “And third… is there anything else you can tell me? Information you can give me that would help me solve the case?”
Mona bit down on her bright red bottom lip. Her teeth came away from that interaction stained bright red. I didn’t bother telling her. Just because I was going to work with the woman, didn’t mean I had to like her. “I can arrange a meeting with a contact,” Mona said. “The receptionist at the paper’s offices. She was there on the night of Emma’s death. And I have other resources too. If you need anything regarding the case, you can call me on my personal number.” She handed me her perfumed card.
“Good,” I said. “The sooner you arrange that meeting with the receptionist, the better.” I wrote down my banking details for Mona and handed them over, feeling as if I had just sold my soul. While she made the transfer, I noted, mentally, her so-called alibi for the night of the murder. It wasn’t a good one. Not strong enough to save her from arrest.
No wonder the police were interested in her.
My phone pinged with a notification, and my heart did a flip at the sight of the first half of the money coming into my nearly empty account. This was it. I had made a deal with the devil to save my business.
What could go wrong?
5
Later that day…
* * *
Naturally, we couldn’t meet with the receptionist at the Burger Bar, as much as I wanted to drop by for our usual burger and fries. I couldn’t hold a clandestine meeting right under Grizzy’s nose. And Missi’s eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s. She’d know something was up right away. I didn’t have friends outside of our group.
“We’re going to eat!” Aggy sang, prancing down the sidewalk beside me. “And we can eat tonight too. At home. This is amazing.”
Another wave of guilt beset me. I patted my cousin on the shoulder. The one positive of us going through this together was I no longer wanted to rip her hat off her head and shake it at her when she got into one of her whiny, annoying moods.
We had bonded. A year of having her sleeping on the futon had helped too.
“This is the place,” I said, stopping outside The Nut Shoppe. It was a small establishment that served vegan baked goods. It wasn’t my favorite restaurant, but the food here wasn’t half-bad. Besides, short of meeting in Sal’s Pizzeria, I didn’t have much choice.
“I’m starving.” Aggy rubbed her belly.
“Calm down, Agatha. You’ll get food in a minute. Remember why we’re here. You’re to observe and take note of our witness’s behavior. I’ll do the talking. Got it?”
Aggy gave a begrudging nod. She despised the private investigation business—her true passion was baking—but she didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. It was do this or never see a cent of her inheritance.
We entered The Nut Shoppe, and a woman, sitting at a round table in front of the windows, waved at us.
“Christie?” she called.
Short, stocky, with limp brown hair clinging to her face. In her twenties. I didn’t recognize her, even though I’d been living in Sleepy Creek for a while now. Was she new to town? Or just one of the locals who hadn’t come into the Burger Bar in the last couple of years?
I walked over, tailed by a grumpy Aggy, and stuck out a hand. “Christie Watson. Pleasure.”
“Gail.”
I sat down across from her, gesturing for my cousin to take the seat beside our witness. That way, she could watch unhindered. Aggy sat down, picked up her menu, and started perusing, completely ignoring Gail.
“Thank you for meeting with me today,” I said.
“Yeah, no problem. I was pretty shocked that Mona called me to talk to you,” she replied, taking a sip of her coffee.
“You were surprised? Why’s that?”
Gail drew her fingers through her flat, brown hair. “Well… you know, Mona was—”
“Can we get a server over here, please?” Aggy called out waving her hand at the baristas behind the coffee bar.
Gail tried again. “Mona was—”
The server appeared beside us, and I nearly slapped the table. Aggy was doing her best to make this interview difficult. She did that without trying.
“What can I get for you folks?” the server asked, sweetly.
It wasn’t h
er fault Agatha had the patience of a mouse in a cheese factory. “A coffee and a brownie for me, please,” I said.
“I want the apple pie! And coffee. Oh, and a brownie!”
“Sure thing.” The server headed off to put in our orders.
Finally, I turned back to my witness. “Sorry, Gail, what were you saying?”
“I was saying that it’s shocking to me that Mona was the one who asked you to talk to me because… well, what I have to say doesn’t exactly look good for her.” Gail sniffed.
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I work as the receptionist at the paper’s offices, as you know.”
“Sure.”
“And Emma was the last one at the office on that night,” Gail said, “apart from Mona Jonah. They were arguing from what I could tell. Arguing about the fact that Emma had replaced her as the editor of the paper.”
I brought a notepad out and wrote down the information. There was something about the feeling of pen and paper that helped me think. “What else did you see?”
“Not much,” Gail replied. “See, I had to head off for the evening. This was around 6:00 p.m. or so. I wanted to check on Emma and say goodnight, but, well, she was kind of busy screaming at Mona.”
“She was yelling?”
“Oh yeah. Yeah, she was yelling. Emma was pretty young to be an editor, or so I thought, but man, she had a fire in her. No wonder they chose her as Mona’s replacement. When Mona started on her, she didn’t hold back. She was yelling something about Mona not being fit to be an editor at a tabloid let alone the Creeker Gazette.”
“Ouch.” More notes for my pad.
“She also used some pretty colorful language, but I won’t repeat it.” Gail grimaced.
“Did you see anything else that day, anything suspicious that might’ve been worth noting down, now that we know what happened that night?” I asked.
Gail sipped her coffee, gazing off to the side as she considered it. “Hmm. No. Not really. It was just another day at the office. But I do have some other juicy details about the murder.”
“You do?” In my experience, referring to a murder as “juicy” was never a good thing.
Aggy had paled, but recovered quickly at the sight of the server moving toward our table.
The server dropped off our food and beverage, and I waited until she had retreated before continuing the line of questioning. “What kind of details are you talking about?”
“Well, first off, the police found a knife at the scene. Apparently, Emma was stabbed. A lot.”
Aggy froze with a forkful of apple pie inches from her mouth. She hesitated, going cross-eyed as she stared at the pastry, then shrugged and ate it. A testament to how hungry she was since Aggy was incredibly squeamish.
“So, they have the murder weapon,” I said, pensively. “Interesting. What else do you know?”
“About the murder? Apparently, they found some kind of, I don’t know, threatening note on her body? But nobody knows what it says. Other than that, I can tell you a little about the craziness that was Emma’s personal life.”
“Please do.” I took a sip of coffee then waited, my pen poised over the page.
“Emma was involved with a new man. See, she had just gotten a divorce from some guy. An out-of-towner. Rumor has it, he might’ve followed her out here.” Gail’s eyes were alive as she spun the tale.
“Do you know who the new boyfriend was?”
“No,” she replied. “But it was all over the office. Emma worked as Mona’s assistant for a short while before she stole her job, and, yeah, she talked with a couple of people about her personal life. Just not in a lot of detail. Naturally, as the receptionist, I pick up on all the hot gossip. They’re saying that Emma was deliberately trying to keep this boyfriend of hers a secret from people at the paper. Or because she didn’t want her ex-husband to find out.”
I wrote it all down, underlining the parts I thought were relevant.
So, we had an editor who had been fired, Mona, and was the last one who had been seen with the victim. Not looking good for the Gossip Queen. Then there was an ex-husband, nameless, who might’ve been out for revenge, and a new boyfriend, also nameless, who was being kept a secret. Motives and intrigue around every corner in this case.
And, of course, the knife. In a way, it was a pity the police had the murder weapon. I couldn’t use knowledge of it to find out who might’ve possessed a similar knife as I’d done in a past case.
I tapped my pen against my chin. “Do you know anything about the knife?”
“Nothing,” Gail said, giving a shake of her head. “Just that it was used forcibly.”
Aggy froze again, did another shrug, and continued inhaling her apple pie. Gail watched her with no small measure of disgust.
“Is she OK?” Gail asked, directing the question at me.
“Look at her,” I replied, while taking more notes. “What do you think?”
Aggy ignored us and chased another bite of apple pie with a sip of coffee. At least, my cousin was fed. And I had more details about the case.
“Thank you for your help, Gail,” I said. “This has been great.”
“I’m glad I could give you something to work with. I know the cops are checking it out, but… well, we all know you have a reputation for solving murder cases,” Gail said. “It’s a good thing you decided to take the case.”
I hoped she was right.
6
After lunch…
* * *
Aggy stifled burps as we turned the corner into Gossip Street, the road that held The Creeker Gazette’s headquarters. My cousin was sluggish, often stopping to stretch and yawn, and whining non-stop about needing a rest.
“—so tired,” she continued.
I had tuned her out for most of the walk from The Nut Shoppe to here. My focus was on our next step. Figuring out if the cameras in Gossip Street had caught anything.
Not too long ago, Mayor Samson, on the prompting of Mona Jonah in a town meeting, had decided to have cameras installed on some of the streets for safety purposes. Though, Missi insisted it was only so Mona could catch townsfolk doing strange things and use it as gossip fodder.
While the terrible twins had been against the installation of the cameras, as had many of Sleepy Creek’s residents, the recordings had helped me once before.
I was hoping they’d do the same now.
A recording of folks moving in and out of the offices of the newspaper would help me narrow down my suspect list.
“I don’t want to walk anymore,” Aggy said. “This is dumb. It’s hot, and I’m tired.”
“Nobody asked you to wear a pinafore with a long-sleeved shirt, Agatha,” I snapped.
She folded her arms and pouted like a two-year-old. I spotted a wrought-iron bench under the shade of a tree peeking from the sidewalk and guided my cousin over to it. “Sit. And stay.”
Aggy, satisfied at last, lowered herself with a relieved sigh.
I backed up a few paces, searching for the cameras in question. There were two in the street, installed on the tops of lampposts at opposite ends of Gossip Street. I walked over to the one nearest me and stopped, fists on my hips.
The camera had been torn from its bracket and hung skew, wires showing at its base.
A suspicion grew in my mind, and I strode past Aggy, her head drooping, chin touching her chest as she dozed, toward the other end of road. The camera there had fallen prey to the same vandal.
The killer, I had to assume, had ensured that they wouldn’t be seen entering the offices of the newspaper. So, it was someone familiar with Sleepy Creek. The cameras weren’t exactly obvious. You’d have to know they were there, and just about every Sleepy Creeker had that knowledge.
Hadn’t Gail told me the ex-husband had been from out of town? That didn’t rule him out yet, but it was worth noting down.
I cast another glance at my cousin, but she was fine, still dozing on the bench. I ducked into the street adjacent and
checked the cameras—these ones were in good shape.
So, our killer destroys the cameras in Gossip Street, but not in any of the other streets surrounding it. Why is that?
Could that mean that the killer had been confident they could get away without being seen? A secret route perhaps?
Regardless, I needed the footage from the cameras, and I knew just the woman who could provide it.
I strode back to Aggy and sat down beside her, drawing my phone out of my pocket.
Mona picked up on the first ring. “What do you have for me, Watson?”
“For you? Nothing,” I replied.
Aggy snorted in her sleep and slipped lower on the bench.
“But there are questions that need answering, Mona,” I said. “You realize you were the last person seen with Emma Carte?”
“Look, I didn’t hire you so you could accuse me of—”
“You hired me to investigate the case. I made it clear from the start that I’d be investigating every avenue. That includes finding out whether you had the motive and means to kill Miss Carte.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mona seethed.
“That’s how investigations work,” I replied. “You want to prove your innocence, you need to help me.”
“I did! I have!” Mona’s tone was angry, but tinged with something else. Desperation? “I set up that meeting with Gail, the receptionist.”
“You did,” I conceded, sparing a glance for Aggy who was slowly sliding down on the bench. Any further and she’d topple right off. It was tempting to let her. “But I need more.”
“Fine. What do you need?”
“The camera footage from the area around the newspaper’s offices excluding Gossip Street,” I said.
“Oh. That will be difficult,” Mona replied.
She didn’t ask me why I didn’t want the footage from Gossip Street. Does she know that the cameras are vandalized? “Why?”
The BBQ Burger Murder Page 3