Dead, Bath, and Beyond

by Lorraine Bartlett

  “Yeah,” Ray said, “it was one of those love triangle things. Easy enough to figure out who did it, but even still, there’s loads of interviews and phone calls and so much paperwork to fill out that your eyes glaze over.”

  “I suppose so.” That part of the job wasn’t shown on television. With every hour that had passed without a visit from Detective Hamilton, Katie had drawn easier and easier breaths. It wasn’t comforting to know all that easy breathing had been a mistake. She sighed. “Well, anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “So talk.” Ray got up and grabbed the coffeepot. “Want another?”

  She held out her mug. As he topped it off, she said, “I was just wondering about Josh being found at Sassy Sally’s.”

  “You and me both.” Ray dropped back into his chair. “It’s just plain weird.”

  “This is a little scary,” Katie said. “I’m not used to the two of us thinking the same thing about anything, let alone a murder.”

  “Now that I’m a member of the general public and not carrying a badge, I get to say what I think instead of what I had to say to catch the bad guys.”

  The idea that Detective Davenport might be a much different person than Ray Davenport had never occurred to Katie. She’d always assumed they were one and the same. If they weren’t, she was going to have to get to know the man in front of her all over again.

  “Weird,” Katie said, thinking about doing so. Ray, however, must have assumed she was talking about the murder, because he nodded.

  “Yeah, the whole thing is off. You’d think drowning the guy would have been enough. Whoever killed him could have gotten away with it, since there weren’t any other wounds, defensive or otherwise. Not even a single clonk on the noggin.” Ray rapped his own head with his knuckles.

  Katie eyed him. “How do you know there weren’t any other wounds?”

  “I may be retired, but I’m not dead. A murder happens practically in my front yard, I’m going to ask some questions.”

  Katie filed a mental note that Ray was still in contact with his former colleagues on a regular basis. She’d suspected as much, but it was nice to have the confirmation. “Don and Nick have alibis,” she said. “But I’m sure they’re still concerned that they may be implicated in Josh’s death.”

  “Alibis or not, he did turn up in their bathtub,” Ray said.

  “Whose side are you on?” Katie bristled. “I thought you were going to help me.”

  “Help you what? Even though I’m not there, the Sheriff’s Office is still competent.”

  “But like you said, they’re busy, and who knows when they’ll get around to clearing Don’s and Nick’s names? It wasn’t so long ago that a skeleton was found in there, remember? If word gets around, their business could be finished before it’s even started.”

  “Oh, I remember, all right.” Ray glowered at her. “I remember you being an interfering—”

  “And here I thought we were getting to be friends,” Katie said, smiling, interrupting whatever he might have been going to say. “All I’m saying is, I’d appreciate some help. Just talking things through. With all your years of experience, I’m sure you’ll think of things that I don’t.”

  Ray looked at her. “Yeah? That’s a switch.”

  Katie felt her cheeks grow warm. In the past, she’d accused him of not thinking outside the box more than once. “Well, sure.”

  After a very long moment of silence, Ray shrugged. “Anyway, what I meant was that there has to be some reason Kimper was stuck into that particular bathtub. Otherwise, why go to the trouble of moving him?”

  Katie hadn’t thought about it exactly that way before.

  “Plus, you’d think anyone who’s watched any of those CSI shows, and that has to be pretty much everyone, would know they’d test the water in his lungs.”

  She hadn’t thought about that, either.

  “But what I really can’t figure is the drowning,” Ray said. “Anyone who’s drowning and isn’t catatonic fights it. It’s just human nature.”

  Katie wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and held on tight. She hadn’t thought all the way down to the bottom about how Josh had died. He hadn’t been much of a human being, but he hadn’t deserved to die like that. “Poor Josh,” she whispered for the first time ever, and she truly meant it.

  On Wednesday, Katie hurried into Del’s Diner a few minutes late for her standing date with Andy. She looked around the dining area but saw no sign of her boyfriend. As she hesitated, Sandy, the waitress passed her carrying a tray of empty dishes.

  “Hey, hon,” she said. “You looking for that handsome hunk of man they call Andy?”

  Katie laughed. “Yes, and he’s even later than I am.” Just then, her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her purse. “Speak of the devil,” she said, as she thumbed it on. “Where are you?”

  The clattering noises of the pizzeria’s kitchen came through the phone loud and clear over the sound of Andy’s voice. “Sorry about this,” he said, “but I won’t be able to make it over there. Jim’s grandmother, I think it was, is having some sort of emergency and his parents are on vacation and his brother is useless, so it’s on Jim to make sure she’s all right.”

  Katie blinked at the long explanation. “I understand. I hope everything turns out”—a loud, metallic bang! in Andy’s background made her wince—“okay for her.”

  “What’s that? Oh, sure.” After another loud banging noise, he said, “Sorry, Katie, I have to go. These guys need a little more hand-holding than Jim had led me to believe.” Katie started to say good-bye, but Andy cut off their call in the middle of calling out to his workers, “I don’t care if you cleaned it yesterday, this is today and—”

  Well. Katie slid her phone back into her purse. Now what was she going to do? Her stomach was already accustomed to eating at this time of day. She didn’t mind eating alone if she had a book with her, but since she’d assumed she’d be eating with Andy, she was bookless, and her phone didn’t have enough power left in it to let her read off the reading app through a meal.

  “Hi, Katie.” Across the half-empty dining area, Brittany Kohler, owner of the Envy Salon and Day Spa, was waving at her.

  Waving back, Katie walked over. “All by yourself today?”

  Brittany made a face. “Wasn’t supposed to be, but my friend had to cancel. How about you?”

  “Same thing. Andy is shorthanded at Angelo’s right now, so he couldn’t make it.” Katie had known this was likely to happen, now that school was back in session. The college and high school kids who’d picked up all the summer hours they could were back in the classroom, and Andy had a distinct lack of experienced personnel. Though she knew the situation would improve quickly, she was already missing Andy’s ready smile.

  “Have a seat, then.” Brittany gestured to the bench seat across from her. “No reason for both of us to eat alone.”

  Smiling, Katie slid into the booth. “Thanks. I was just wishing I had a book, but now I don’t need one.”

  Brittany’s face lit up. “You’re a reader, too? What kind of books are your favorite?”

  “Mysteries,” Katie said promptly. “I read a little bit of everything, but in a library or a bookstore, it’s the mystery section I browse first.”

  “Historical fiction for me,” Brittany said. “And I don’t care what time period as long as there aren’t any computers, cell phones, or video games.”

  Katie laughed. “Historicals are probably my second favorite genre. Now, if you combine a nice, long mystery with a big, thick historical, well, that’s my idea of a great weekend.”

  In no time at all, the two women were so deep into a lively conversation about books that they didn’t see Sandy standing ready to take their order until she rapped her knuckles on the table. “Sorry to interrupt you ladies,” she said, not sounding
sorry at all, “but if you want to eat, I have to get your slips into the kitchen.”

  The two women ordered quickly and went back to their book discussion. By the time they finished eating, though they’d had to agree to have vastly different opinions about the latest bestseller, Katie felt the warm glow of knowing that she and Brittany had gone from acquaintance to friend in the span of one meal. She knew she should have talked to Brittany about Crystal and the pungent odor of acrylic nails, but she easily rationalized it away by telling herself that discussion should more appropriately be held in her office.

  “Are you going back to Artisans Alley?” Brittany asked as they left the diner and headed back toward Victoria Square.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s such a great location,” Brittany said and launched into a soliloquy on just how much she loved the area. Katie half listened. She was already planning the rest of her afternoon.

  As they turned into Victoria Square’s main entrance, Katie looked across the expanse of parking lot, her attention suddenly on the steps up to the porch of Sassy Sally’s. “Um, I just remembered I need to do something. See you later, Brittany.” With a friendly wave, Katie hurried off across the Square.

  Halfway there, an unmarked police car passed her. She nodded at the driver, Detective Hamilton, who politely acknowledged her. Once he was out of sight, she started walking even faster. In short order, she was running up the steps and inside the inn.

  “Don?” she called, automatically heading for the kitchen. “Nick? Are you here?” She burst into the light-filled room and saw her two friends sitting at the island, both of them staring vacantly into space. “I saw Detective Hamilton leaving. Is everything okay?”

  “Katie.” Nick gave her a wan smile. “We’re fine, honest.”

  “Just ducky,” said his partner sourly. “Couldn’t be better. Wouldn’t want to change anything in my life, not a single bit.”

  “He was only was asking questions,” Nick said, with the air of someone who’d already said the same thing many times before. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Sure it does.” Don pushed back his stool and stood. “Don’t you see? It means they think there’s something to ask questions about!”

  Katie looked from Don to Nick and back to Don. She hesitated, then said, “Well, Josh’s body did turn up in your bathtub. Wouldn’t it be even weirder if Hamilton didn’t have questions? Heck, the times you left and returned from that party could help them narrow things down.”

  “You’re right,” Nick said slowly. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Don shoved his stool forward, making it scrape horribly against the tile floor. “He wants to pin this murder on the gay guys; you know he does. We’re targets, like always, just for being different.” He stalked out of the room, almost running into Warren Noth.

  With a clipboard in one hand and a tape measure in the other, Noth turned to watch him go, then turned back around to face Katie and Nick. “Was it something I said?”

  “Hardly.” Nick reached out to touch Katie on the arm. “Thanks for stopping by. It’s good to know that you’re looking out for us.”

  “You’re my friends,” she said simply. “If there’s anything I can do, anything at all, promise you’ll let me know?”

  Nick gave her a smile and a nod, but Katie wasn’t at all sure that he’d keep his word.

  Five

  Katie stopped by Artisans Alley just long enough to tell Vance and Rose that she’d be available by cell phone if anyone needed her, and she hurried out before the questions started. Not that she couldn’t take off for a few hours if she wanted to—she owned the place, after all—but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done so. If she’d lingered, someone would inevitably ask, and she didn’t want to lie if she didn’t have to.

  Once she’d settled in her car, though, she decided that “errands” could be her stock answer. It was vague in a polite way and also boring enough that no one would ask further. Would they?

  She was still considering the question as she put on the signal to turn into Winton Office Park. It had been months—eleven months, to be exact—since she’d driven into the place, and she was pleased, though not surprised, to find that she hadn’t missed it in the least.

  If it had been possible to separate her actual job duties from the fact that Josh had been her boss, she might have been able to say that she’d enjoyed her time at Kimper Insurance Agency, but the two were so intertwined that every time she thought about the fifty- and sixty-hour weeks she’d worked to process the claims and write the policies of clients, she still felt a residual anger for how hard she’d worked and how little Josh had recognized that fact.

  But while she wasn’t going to mourn Josh, she also wasn’t going to sit on her hands and watch Don and Nick stress themselves to a frazzle, not if she could do anything about it.

  Katie parked in front of her old office—very intentionally not parking in the spot she’d regularly used—and got out of the car. She immediately noticed that no one had planted any annual flowers at the base of the foundation shrubs. And that no one had washed the windows in ages. And that no one had cleaned the spiderwebs off the back-lit company sign. All were jobs that she’d done in the past.

  She shook her head, again not at all surprised. She’d been an idiot to do all that, and she was glad that, whoever the new office manager was, she’d been smart enough to set up boundaries. Katie reached for the door handle, remembering that though Josh had said his new hire was outstanding, his wife had said she was useless.

  Then Katie remembered the advice of her great-aunt Lizzie, the woman who had raised her after her parents had died. “Form your own opinions,” she said more than once. “Don’t be lazy and use other people’s. Use your own noggin. That’s why it’s up there taking up space.”

  Smiling, Katie walked into the office’s front lobby. It looked exactly the same as it had the day she’d stormed out. Same beige walls, same slightly darker beige carpet. Same bland furniture, with probably the same magazines on the coffee table. Even the fake ficus in the corner looked the same.

  “Hi. Can I help you?”

  Katie turned to face the woman who was sitting in what used to be her own chair. On a normal day, Katie felt confident that she looked presentable, professional, clean-cut, tidy, and moderately attractive. On good days, she felt downright pretty. But even on the best day ever, she would never come close to the sheer beauty of the woman at the front desk.

  A few years younger than Katie’s thirty-one, she had wavy jet-black hair in a short cut that framed her face and drew attention to her cheekbones. Her nose was small, her lips were full, and just as Katie was making an instant knee-jerk judgment, she noticed that the whites of the woman’s eyes were red.

  This meant one of two things: She had hay fever allergies, or she’d been crying. Either way, it was obvious that, in spite of her physical beauty, she wasn’t perfect.

  Sneakily cheered, Katie smiled. “Hi, I’m Kate Bonner.”

  “I’m Erikka,” the younger woman said. “With two Ks. Um, Erikka Wiley.” Her voice was high-pitched but friendly. “Are you a customer here? Because if you are, I think I can process a claim, but I hope you’re not here to get an insurance policy because I can’t issue those, I’m not an insurance agent, Josh was the agent, Josh Kimper like on the name of the business? Out front? But Josh isn’t here, he’s gone . . .” Her steady stream of words came to a sudden stop. “He’s gone,” she repeated. “And he won’t be coming back. Because he’s . . . he’s . . .” She gulped down a sob.

  “He’s dead,” Katie said gently.

  Erikka’s eyes, big and brown, looked up at her, and the tears started to flow. “He really is, isn’t he? I can’t believe it . . . He’s gone . . . He’s . . .” She shoved her chair back and stood. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right . . .” She fled in the direction o
f what Katie knew was the restroom.

  “That’s interesting,” Katie said to herself. As she waited for Erikka-with-two-Ks to return, she leaned over to look at the papers on the desk. Even upside down, she could tell what they were—forms for processing claims from a car accident. Nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing that would give her any new information about the investigation into Josh’s murder.

  She sighed and looked at the lateral file cabinets on the back wall. If she was sure Erikka was going to be out of the room for a good ten minutes, she might have tiptoed over and thumbed through the contents.

  Not that she knew what she was looking for, of course, but after spending so many years pushing papers of all kinds, she felt sure she would recognize an anomaly if she saw it. And anything out of the ordinary might lead to a clue that might eventually lead to the killer and then Don and Nick would be in the clear.

  “Sorry about that.” Erikka hurried back to her chair, a tissue in her hand. “How can I help you? Are you a client here? Marcie, that’s Josh’s wife, she’s told me to do what I can to keep the business running. She’s going to sell it, probably as fast as she . . .” Erikka dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “this keeps happening. I’m just . . . It’s just so weird, you know?”

  “Is anyone interested in buying the business?” Katie asked.

  Erikka shrugged. “There was a guy in here this morning, but he didn’t ask many questions.” She looked up at Katie with hope in her reddened eyes. “Is that why you’re here? Do you want to buy the agency?”

  Not in a million years, Katie wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead she smiled. “No, I just wanted to offer my condolences.” And to see if she could learn anything about the murder investigation. “I used to work here. I left about a year ago.”

  Erikka blinked. “You’re that Katie? Josh talked about you all the time.”

  “I bet.” Katie laughed.