Jo-Jo looked over Cate’s shoulder, gave a little gasp, then pushed her aside. “Eddie!” she cried as she ran to him.
One of the officers tried to stop her, but he apparently didn’t expect speed or agility from such a grandmotherly-looking woman, and she adroitly ducked under his arm. Her foot hit the gun and she grabbed it, looked at it in horror, and dropped it. She slumped to her knees by the body.
“Oh, Eddie, you didn’t have to do this!” Jo-Jo moaned. “I’d have forgiven you for shooting Marianne and Lucinda and Toby.”
A surprised officer grabbed and pulled her away. “You’ll have to stay back, ma’am. We have to investigate this. You know this person?”
The officer braced Jo-Jo with an arm around her shoulders. She buried her face in her hands. Cate’s first moment of surprise slipped into sympathy. However Jo-Jo might bad-mouth Eddie the Ex, apparently she still had feelings for him.
“He’s Eddie Kieferson, my ex-husband. I don’t know why he shot my dolls, but he didn’t have to kill himself over doing it.”
Cate was doubtful about Jo-Jo’s conclusion that some overwhelming guilt had prompted Eddie to shoot himself, but she didn’t know enough to come up with any different explanation. She couldn’t tell what the officers might be thinking. One got on a cell phone and the other herded Cate and a protesting Jo-Jo out to the dining room.
A raucous bray from Maude announced that someone else had arrived, and a moment later Mitch and the officer almost collided at the door. The officer made Mitch produce identification and then planted him in the dining room with Cate and Jo-Jo. Raindrops glistened in his brown hair and darkened the shoulders of his denim jacket.
“You okay?” were Mitch’s first words to Cate. His blue eyes searched her face and he touched her cheek as if he’d like to expand that to a fierce hug, but he settled for a squeeze of hand on her shoulder.
Cate assured him she was okay, though that wasn’t totally correct. Queasiness still roiled her stomach, and she doubted she could walk a straight line, but she managed introductions—Jo-Jo Kieferson, Mitch Berenski—and gave him a hurried update on Eddie the Ex and what had happened here. She left out the minor detail of the dust mop.
The sheriff’s deputies may have been slow to respond to a doll shooting, but the response to an ex-husband’s death was immediate and abundant. More vehicles arrived, officers in uniform and other people in plainclothes. Maude brayed until she began to sound more like a squeaky cartoon character than a monster.
Cate now suspected that when Jo-Jo called 911, they’d thought the doll shooting was vandalism. There’d been a lot of it recently. Doll shootings would undoubtedly have garnered a response soon, but they weren’t crisis enough to bring the instant reaction that murder would.
Although this wasn’t murder either. Eddie had apparently shot the dolls and then himself. Although … did suicides often shoot themselves in the center of the forehead? Note to self: research methods of suicide.
Newly arrived deputies separated Cate, Jo-Jo, and Mitch for interviews. The questions Cate was asked seemed routine. Name, address, occupation. She explained why she was here and offered her identification card from Belmont Investigations. That didn’t appear to make her and the deputy instant crime-solving buddies. Mitch’s interview lasted less than five minutes.
“They told me they might have more questions for me later on, but I could leave for now,” he told Cate. Without asking for her opinion, he added, “But I’m not leaving.”
Right now, Cate didn’t argue with that protective stance. She might not want to admit it, but his male presence was reassuring.
During the time that Jo-Jo’s questioning went on and on, a deputy with both digital and video cameras spent considerable time in the room where Eddie’s body still lay, then photographed the dolls and living room from all angles. Someone dug bullets out of the walls behind the dolls. Each bullet went in a separate plastic bag. Another person put the dolls in big plastic bags and carried them away.
When the officer finally returned Jo-Jo to the dining room, she grabbed the back of a chair for support and dropped onto the padded seat as if her knees were wobbly.
“They wanted to know all about Eddie and what kind of relationship we had and how long we’d been divorced and was he depressed or had he talked about killing himself. As if I’d know!”
“You weren’t in touch with him?”
“I never heard from him except when he objected to some bill he had to pay. Then the officer wanted to know who he was married to now and where they lived. How long I’d lived here and did I have any visitors today. Where I’d gone and when and for how long, what I was doing and who I was with. How Eddie got in the house.”
“How did he get in?”
“Probably looked in the dirt in that flowerpot on the back steps. That’s where I’ve always kept a house key, wherever we lived. I wanted to call a funeral home, but they said his body wouldn’t be released for a while.”
“I think someone from the medical examiner’s office has to look at it.”
“They said there’d have to be an autopsy. An autopsy.” Jo-Jo’s daze flared into anger. She jumped out of the chair, hands on hips. “Why do they have to do that to him? He has a bullet hole in his head! He shot himself. What more do they need to know? And they said they might have more questions to ask me later.”
“You don’t have to answer their questions if you don’t want to. You can tell them you want your lawyer present. And then let your lawyer advise you about saying anything.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Jo-Jo skewered Cate with a vexed look, as if Cate had neglected a duty, but a moment later she sagged back into the chair. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Why would I want a lawyer? I didn’t do anything. Eddie shot himself,” she repeated.
Yes, that was what it looked like. The gun was right there by Eddie’s hand, and the deputy’s questions about Eddie’s state of mind suggested suicide. But the deputy’s other questions sounded as if they might have other suspicions. As if they were checking to see if Jo-Jo could account for her whereabouts at Eddie’s time of death.
Reluctantly Jo-Jo added, “I suppose I should call Kim and tell her.”
“I think the officers will take care of that. Kim is Eddie’s new wife,” Cate added by way of explanation to Mitch.
“Will you stay with me after they leave?” Jo-Jo asked Cate suddenly. “I don’t want to be alone here.”
Cate had the feeling that wasn’t how this evening was going to play out. She glanced at Mitch again. She knew what he was thinking. No, no, no. Do not stay here.
Cate started to say that Jo-Jo could come to the house and stay with her for the night, but Rebecca had recently moved the bed out of the guest room and started using the room for sewing and crafts. With Cate and Octavia moving out soon, their room would then become the guest room.
So instead Cate said to Jo-Jo, “I’ll be glad to stay with you.” She ignored Mitch’s scowl.
As it turned out, staying or leaving wasn’t either her or Jo-Jo’s decision. A deputy informed them that the house would be sealed off during their investigation. He said he’d accompany Jo-Jo to her bedroom so she could pick up a few items, but he couldn’t say when she’d be allowed to return.
“But I don’t understand,” Jo-Jo said. Her earlier flare of anger had fizzled into bewilderment, and the lines in her face drooped with both emotional and physical weariness. “Maude needs feeding. And Effie too. I can’t leave them here alone.”
“Maybe you could take the cat with you? I’ll see that the burro is fed. And maybe your friends here could take you somewhere?” The deputy gave Cate a questioning glance and in an aside said, “I don’t think she should drive tonight.”
“I’ll be glad to do that.”
“But where would I go?” Jo-Jo lifted her hands and looked around, as if the deputy had doomed her to join the homeless under a bridge somewhere.
“What about your friend Do
nna?” Cate suggested.
“Donna’s the biggest gossip in Lane County.”
Cate ignored that objection. “I’ll call her while you get your things together.” She punched the number into her cell phone while the deputy escorted Jo-Jo down the hallway.
When a woman’s voice answered, Cate identified herself and, without going into details, said there was an emergency and asked if Jo-Jo could spend the night there.
“Of course she can!” the woman said. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. A little … rattled. She can explain it to you. We’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”
“I’ll have tea ready.”
After Cate put the phone away, Mitch said, “You can take her in your car, and I’ll follow.”
“There’s no need for that. I’ll call you later.”
“I’ll follow you,” Mitch repeated.
“Bossy,” Cate muttered.
“Cautious,” Mitch corrected. “Because maybe there’s a killer out there. And who knows what he may have in mind.”
Cate mentally rolled her eyes. Mitch worrying again. Seeing danger lurking behind every bush, bedpost, and burro. Although Mitch did have an annoying habit of being right …
4
Cate had found a cat carrier on the back porch and had an uncooperative Effie stuffed into it by the time Jo-Jo returned with an overnight case.
“Thank you for checking every single item I put in there,” Jo-Jo said to the deputy, sarcasm sharp as Effie’s claws. “I wouldn’t want to make off with something that would send your department into a dither.”
“We don’t go into dithers, ma’am,” the officer said politely.
Jo-Jo glared at the deputy, but after he jotted down Donna’s address and phone number, she let Mitch take her elbow and steer her to the door. Cate carried the cat carrier with a protesting Effie inside. Once outside, where the rain had settled into a steady drizzle, Jo-Jo jerked away from Mitch.
“I am not going to Donna’s and listening to her talk, talk, talk. And I can drive myself,” she declared. She tried to grab her overnight case out of Mitch’s hand. “I’ll just get a motel room. Eddie can pay—” Jo-Jo stopped short, as if it only then hit her that Eddie would never again be coerced into paying for anything. The fight went out of her, and her shoulders sagged.
Maude was silent now. Apparently her job description covered only the announcement of incoming visitors, not exiting ones. But there were other discordant noises. Chatter of radio in an empty police car. Patter of raindrops on car metal. Voices in the house. Effie’s jungle-cat screeches.
Cate waited several moments and then said gently, “I’ll take you to your friend’s place.”
Jo-Jo didn’t resist when Mitch led her to Cate’s car and put the overnight case in the backseat. Cate set the cat carrier beside it. The headlights of Mitch’s big SUV followed Cate’s Honda onto the gravel road. In the rearview mirror, Cate saw a uniformed figure come out and start stringing yellow tape across the driveway. Jo-Jo remained silent, except for minimal answers to Cate’s questions about locating the address, as they drove into town. The earlier daze seemed to have fully enveloped her now. Effie’s yowls dropped to occasional plaintive meows.
Donna had apparently been watching for them from the window of her white cottage. The porch light went on, and she opened the door. Cate helped guide an unsteady Jo-Jo to the door. Mitch carried the overnight case and cat carrier, then whispered that he’d wait for her and went back to the SUV.
The woman who met them at the door was about Jo-Jo’s age, but her figure was trim in black capri pants, and her blonde hair cut in a stylish angled bob. The first thing she said was, “I didn’t know the cat would be coming too.” She sounded dismayed.
“Under the circumstances, it seemed necessary.”
Then the woman gasped when she saw Jo-Jo. “For goodness’ sakes, what happened?”
Jo-Jo’s face looked years older than when Cate had arrived at the house. Her hair plastered her head like a permed helmet, her blouse hung out of her slacks, and her shoulders sagged.
Jo-Jo didn’t offer any explanation herself, so Cate said, “Jo-Jo has had something of a shock. Her ex-husband is dead and—”
“Eddie the Ex is dead? Well, after all his shenanigans, I’d say good—”
Cate was almost certain Donna had started to say, “Good riddance!” But she managed to morph it into, “Goodness me, what happened? Did he have a heart attack?”
“Actually,” Cate said, since Jo-Jo still wasn’t speaking, “he was shot at Jo-Jo’s house.”
“Shot!”
“The sheriff’s deputies are at the house, so that’s why we had to bring Effie along.”
Jo-Jo finally said something. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She clutched her stomach, and ominous noises gurgled in her throat. Her eyes lurched into washing machine circles.
Donna grabbed her arm and helped her down a hallway to a bathroom. Retching noises followed, apparently Jo-Jo’s delayed reaction to the events of the evening. Cate stood there, uncertain what she could do to help, or if she should just quietly slip away. She finally perched on the edge of the padded bench in the entryway, cat carrier and overnight case at her feet. Effie was either scared or prudent enough to remain silent now.
A few minutes later Donna came for the case, said she was putting Jo-Jo to bed, and asked if Cate could stay a little longer. She motioned toward the living room. Cate used her cell phone to call Mitch out in the SUV to tell him not to wait for her.
“I don’t need to leave for a while yet,” he said.
A mild statement that Cate knew really meant that whether it was five minutes or five hours until she came out, he’d be waiting. Stubborn man.
Yet the reassuring thought hit her that if someone had followed them from the house, implausible as that seemed, this person wasn’t going to get past Mitch.
Eventually Donna did return to where Cate was sitting on a white sofa in the living room, her feet on the ice-blue carpet. Neither sofa nor carpet looked as if cat paws or hair had ever crossed their immaculate surfaces.
“I don’t know if I should have done it, but I gave her half of one of my sleeping pills. So what’s going on? Jo-Jo wasn’t making any sense. By the way, I’m Donna Echelon. Jo-Jo and I are old friends.” She offered a hand, nails nicely manicured in a silvery pink that matched her lipstick.
Cate shook the hand. “Cate Kinkaid.” She didn’t elaborate on an identification.
“Would you like tea? I made a pot of chamomile when you called.”
A calming cup of chamomile held a certain appeal right now, but Cate shook her head. “Thanks, no. A friend is waiting for me outside.”
Donna dropped to the edge of a chair upholstered in blue velvet. “I can’t believe it. Eddie shot. Well, yes, maybe I can believe it,” she amended. “I’ll bet that new wife did it, didn’t she? By now, he was probably cheating on her too.”
“Actually, it looked as if he killed himself. He was shot in the forehead, and the gun was on the floor beside his body. He’d shot some of Jo-Jo’s dolls before shooting himself in her workroom.”
“Really? How … bizarre.”
“Out of character for Eddie?”
Donna frowned, as if answering that question took some thought. “Once I’d have said way out of character. Shooting the dolls seems to have a certain symbolism to it, and Eddie never had that much imagination. But after he dumped Jo-Jo for that blonde bimbo …” She shook her head, her own blonde bob catching highlights from the lamp. “Now that I think about it, maybe I can see him shooting the dolls.”
“He’d changed?”
“He was certainly different from what he was back when he and Jo-Jo had their burger drive-ins. Before he went all high and mighty with the glass house and fancy restaurant and blonde-babe wife.”
“Jo-Jo thinks he went to her house to kill her, and just turned on the dolls when she wasn’t home,” Cate said. “Though I don’t k
now why he’d kill himself afterward.”
“That does seem strange. He waltzed around the restaurant chatting up customers and handing out favors as if he were some potentate reigning over his private kingdom.”
“You’ve been there?”
Donna touched her throat as if she’d been caught in an indiscretion. “Some friends visiting from Portland wanted to go there. I’d rather Jo-Jo didn’t know.” Her lift of eyebrows asked for Cate’s discretion.
Cate nodded. “Jo-Jo seemed to have mixed feelings about him.”
“She always talked like he was pond scum, but once she told me she thought someday he’d realize he’d made a big mistake, and they’d get back together.”
“If I can do anything to help—” Cate dropped a business card on the coffee table.
Donna picked it up. “You’re a private investigator?” She said the words as if they equaled nuclear bomb expert. “You’re investigating Eddie’s death?”
“No. Jo-Jo had called me earlier, when she found the dolls. Then, while I was at the house, the deputies from the sheriff’s department arrived and found Eddie’s body.”
Cate expected more questions about Eddie’s death, but instead Donna tilted her head and studied Cate. “Why in the world would someone like you become a private investigator?”
Someone like you. What did that mean? Cate was uncomfortably aware that the rain had frizzed her usually flyaway red hair, that one knee now poked through a ragged hole in the worn jeans, and that sometimes she looked more teenagerish than twenty-nine. But Donna, with what sounded like a touch of envy, added, “It must be very exciting.”
“Mostly not. Our work is usually routine. Actually, I’m still an assistant PI,” Cate admitted. “It will be a few months before I get my own license.”
“Really, I’m curious. I’m a librarian. Very unexciting. How does one become a PI in a town like Eugene?”
Cate wasn’t about to go into what a scrambled-egg mess her life had been. Out of work for almost a year, job prospects as dim as a star in some faraway galaxy. Male relationships like a bad chick-lit novel. Living in a room in Uncle Joe and Rebecca’s house. And then along came God’s surprise plans for bringing good out of bad. A PI job in Uncle Joe’s Belmont Investigations. Mitch. A deaf cat. A house of her own. Well, Octavia’s and hers. It was an odd story, tangled up with her one murder case and acquisition of the cat.
Dolled Up to Die Page 3