Missy DeMeanor Cozy Mysteries Boxset

by Brianna Bates

  Missy felt herself getting queasy again and was forced to close her laptop. She couldn’t read anymore and she certainly couldn’t see any more images of absurdly long worms that had been taken out of people’s bodies. She really needed to understand how Karen had died, but the only way she could do that would be to go through the Templeton Police. Tyler couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—help her. Which meant trying to get in front of PJ. She didn’t relish the thought. When they’d talked, he’d given her little to no real information and he hadn’t bothered returning her last call. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk and since they’d determined her cause of death was the infection, they weren’t treating this like a murder. In PJ’s eyes, the case was closed.

  When Missy next checked the time, she realized she was going to be late to the funeral if she didn’t get a move on. She really needed to wash her hair, but hadn’t given herself enough time so again she settled on a body shower and put on a different dress. This one was grey and not as slimming, but at least she could take a deep breath while wearing it. She checked herself in the mirror, petted Cody on her way out, then hit the road.

  ***

  Missy had driven by the Templeton Cemetery more times than she could count, but she’d never been inside. The grounds stretched pretty far, with rolling hills separating the various sections. The older markers were by the entrance. Missy passed them and the conspicuous mausoleums. She’d never given it much thought before now, but she wondered how she wanted her own remains to be treated. Did she want to be buried somewhere or cremated?

  She really didn’t know. Thinking about her own funeral made her wonder how many people would even be in attendance. Her mother would be gone by then. She had plenty of casual friends in Grove City, most people tended to like her, but Noreen was her only close friend at this point. And of course, she had no man in her life and no children. The thought depressed her. Her hypothetical funeral sounded like a pretty pathetic affair.

  Missy added her truck to the line of cars parked just off the tiny strip of road. There were so many people here. Karen had been an only child but her extended family was large and she’d obviously made a lot of friends over the years. And, Missy thought grimly, she’d died young so there were still plenty of people to attend her service.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wise had skipped a more formal ceremony in a church, instead deciding to have the minister say a few words over the grave. Missy followed the herd toward the open grave. There were already so many people here she could barely see the coffin and couldn’t get close to Karen’s parents, who were seated next to the grave and holding hands.

  Missy felt eyes on her and found Connie staring at her from across the way. Missy nodded and Connie did the same. For the most part, Missy didn’t see any new people here this morning that hadn’t attended the viewing last night.

  With one major exception.

  Ron Moore seemed out of place in a nice black suit and bold blue tie with his shaved head, bushy beard, and tattoos crawling up his neck. Missy remembered he worked as an electrician. She’d only been around him a couple of times but just watching him around Karen, she knew how much the man had loved her friend. Thinking back now, Missy remembered Karen mentioning a couple times that they’d struggled with jealousy issues. That was Karen’s nice way of saying Ron was the jealous type. Perhaps that had been the cause of the eventual split.

  Could Ron be a suspect? It was possible, she guessed, but there were some facts working against the theory. First, they’d split up three years ago. Second, Ron would have needed to sneak Karen pills. Not an easy feat if they weren’t seeing each other or speaking anymore. Karen would be unlikely to take pills Ron had given her, unless he’d done it surreptitiously somehow.

  And admittedly, it seemed like a far-fetched way to kill someone. There was no guarantee the person would die from a tape worm infection, just going off the accounts Missy had read this morning online. If a jealous ex-lover wanted to you, would he do it by giving you tape worms?

  It seemed unlikely.

  Still, Missy knew Karen. There was no way her friend would have ever purposely, knowingly ingested tape worms. And there was little chance of her accidentally getting infected. In this country, there were so many regulations around food…if it had happened that way, surely by now there would be a story in the news about some kind of recall.

  Yes. She was sure, no matter what anybody else said. Someone had given Karen tape worms.

  She half-listened to the minister. Missy had been raised somewhat religious and still believed in a higher power, but she didn’t think she needed anyone to help her understand what God was. She preferred her own spirituality to the trappings of an organized religion.

  The minister concluded the eulogy and invited everyone to come pay their final respects. Missy got in the long line. Last night she cried many tears over Karen. Today would be no different. The closer she got the coffin, the more choked up she got.

  Two lines of mourners converged into one and by luck of the draw, Ron Moore ended up getting right in front of her. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes, and Missy gave him a sad smile.

  “Hey, Ron.”

  “Missy.” His voice was thick “Nice to see you.”

  He offered his hand. Missy couldn’t help but notice the tattoos that poked out of the bottom of his shirt sleeve and twisted around his wrist. She’d never understood the appeal of permanently inking one’s body.

  She shook his hand. It was rough and callused.

  “Maybe we could catch up after?” Missy asked.

  He looked at her funny, as if wondering what on earth they could talk about. But then he smiled politely.

  “Sure.”

  They filed toward the coffin the rest of the way in silence. As they got close, Missy bent to pick up one of the carnations off the pile. Mr. and Mrs. Wise were still seated on the other side of the coffin. They were looking at the coffin, but turned so they could hold each other’s hands. A lump the size of a golf ball formed in Missy’s throat as she stooped to place the flower atop the casket along with the rest. She put two fingers to her lips and then touched the coffin. For a moment she hovered over Karen, part of her still not believing her friend was gone.

  Under her breath, Missy said, “I promise.”

  She didn’t need to say the rest. Wherever Karen was right now, Missy knew she understood.

  Misty-eyed, she moved on away from the coffin. Mr. and Mrs. Wise got up to hug her and she was really touched. So far she hadn’t seen them do that with anybody else. Missy clung to them both, not wanting to let go, not wanting to let Karen go, but eventually she had to. They were burying Karen today, but Missy knew from losing her father that they would continue to bury her for a long time, maybe forever.

  Missy had forgotten about catching up with Ron after the service until she saw him striding quickly toward his car with his head down like he didn’t want anybody to notice him. Missy hurried and raised her voice before he pulled the door of his SUV shut.

  “Ron!”

  The man looked out the door at her. For a moment, she feared he’d just wave and drive off but she closed the distance between them quickly enough he had to talk to her.

  “Hey, Missy.” He left his door open but didn’t get out of the SUV. She took this to mean he planned on ending the conversation quickly.

  “Hey.” She smiled up at him, hoping she came across as friendly. “It’s good to see you, considering the circumstances.”

  He nodded and his eyes drifted away till he was looking out the windshield. “Yeah.”

  “I still don’t believe it.”

  She waited for him to look at her. It took a full ten seconds for him to turn back. “Me either.”

  “I know.” She shook her head. “And how it happened…”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I heard it was an infection?”

  His last sentence was somewhere between a statement and a question. “You didn’t hear the specifics?”
/>   He shook his head. “Why would I have?”

  She frowned. “I just know how close you were and being engaged to Karen, I was assum—”

  “That was three years ago, Missy. And once we were split up for good, her parents went cold on me. They acted like I shouldn’t have even come to the viewing last night.”

  She held out a palm. “Sorry, Ron, I didn’t mean anything.”

  His whole body was tense. His one hand hadn’t left the steering wheel. She could tell he was dying to get out of here.

  “It’s public knowledge now so I can tell you,” she said. “She was infected with tape worms.”

  “Tape worms?”

  She nodded, expecting more of a reaction from him. “Can you believe that?”

  He looked away again. “Actually, I can.”

  “What?” The word came out sounding much more challenging than she’d wanted.

  Ron kept gazing out of the windshield. “Her weight really bothered her. It bled over into everything, it was all she thought about. It definitely affected our relationship.”

  “Her weight?” Missy had a hand on her hip. She didn’t care how big or tough he looked, if this guy blamed Karen’s weight for their failed engagement, she might actually throw a punch.

  Finally Ron looked back at her. When he did, his eyes were hostile. “Yeah, Missy, her weight. By the end of our relationship, she couldn’t go more than a day making a joke about how fat she was or crying about how she couldn’t keep the pounds off. It consumed her.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Missy couldn’t help but get angry. “You have no idea what it’s like to be significantly overweight, I’ll bet.”

  “Actually, I do,” Ron said. “That’s how we met originally. We were in the same diet club in our late twenties. We helped each other.”

  Missy was taken aback. Ron was trim, like she’d been exercising his whole life. She would have never thought he’d been obese before. Thinking back, she hadn’t met Ron until he and Karen had been dating for almost a year.

  “I lost eighty pounds after I met her. In a way, I think I did it for her. I wanted to be sexy and…anyway, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Missy wasn’t letting him get away that easily. “Hold on, Ron. Do you seriously think Karen would have given herself tape worms?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. There’s no doubt in mind she could have done something like that.”

  He tried to shut the door, but she shot her hand out and latched on. “Yeah? Well, I don’t. That wasn’t Karen.”

  “I have to leave. Take your hand off my door.”

  She let go expecting him to pull it closed without saying anything else. But he surprised her.

  “By the time we broke up, she was practically out of her mind about her weight.”

  Missy wasn’t letting him get the last word, especially when that last word was harsh. She decided to go for the jugular.

  “She was probably out of her mind for dating you.” She shook her head. “Of all people, you should have understood what she was going through. You struggled with weight yourself!”

  Ron’s eyes narrowed. “So obviously she never told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “I broke up with her, Missy.”

  She heard the words but it was like they were coming from far away and took a long time to get to her. By the time they did, Ron had driven off.

  Like a zombie, she ambled to her car. But instead of getting in, she stood next to it with her hand on the door handle. Now it made sense why Karen had been so reluctant to share details of her break-up with Ron. He had ended things. Maybe she’d been too embarrassed.

  For a brief instant, she’d ruled Ron out as the murderer. He’d broken up with her. That had happened over three years ago. Why would he come back now and try to kill her with tape worms? It sounded preposterous. It was the lamest theory she’d ever come up with on her admittedly few (three and counting) murder investigations.

  But still, there was no denying how strangely he’d acted. Or how angry he’d been. After all these years, Ron should have been over it by now. But he wasn’t.

  ***

  Missy waited almost an hour to see Detective Paul Johnson. The police station in Templeton was much newer compared to the one in Grove City, and a lot bigger to boot. She waited patiently until PJ came out to the front and smiled professionally at her.

  “Miss DeMe—” He smiled shyly. “I guess you’ve heard that one before.”

  Missy wanted to roll her eyes. One of these days Mom would adequately explain why they’d decided to call their only daughter Melissa with a last name of DeMeanor, and then had gone on to exclusively use her nickname.

  But she put on a smile for him. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Especially with how you fancy yourself a detective.”

  The man was smiling but there was a little bit of a tone in his voice. The implication being: she should leave police matters to the police.

  He made no move to let her into the back of the station where his desk or cube or office might be. She looked past his shoulder.

  “Can we talk in your office?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m right in the middle of something. Can you come back later this afternoon, or better yet, can you stop by tomorrow?”

  Missy choked back what she really wanted to say: that she’d been waiting an hour already, and if he didn’t have the time to meet with her he should have just passed that message along to her up front.

  She kept smiling, though it was getting harder to maintain the gesture. “It’s my day off, and I work tomorrow…I promise I’ll only take up a few minutes of your time.”

  PJ leveled his eyes on her, his face neutral. She expected him to show her the door, but instead he checked the time on his watch.

  “I have ten minutes, tops,” he said. “Then I really need to get back to what I was doing.”

  “Thanks.” She hurried forward before he changed his mind. “I appreciate it.”

  She followed him through the police station as PJ snaked his way around the desks that were arranged in haphazard fashion on the floor. Phones were constantly ringing and the cops not on the phones were talking to each other. Everybody looked really busy. It made her think that PJ was telling her the truth, that he really was in the middle of something.

  PJ had a small office that was just big enough to fit two desks for him and his partner. Missy smiled at the other man, who briefly looked up from his computer monitor to see who PJ had brought back.

  “Ben, this is Missy. Missy, Ben.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything, then went back to his computer.

  “Please have a seat, Missy.” PJ pointed at the spare chair in the office. It was covered with files. “You can just put those on the floor.”

  Missy drew in a quiet breath, trying to calm herself. She was a small-town girl and old-fashioned and was not a little miffed that PJ hadn’t cleared the chair for her. It would have been the polite thing to do. It was getting more and more obvious by the moment he was just humoring her. The ten minutes he had allotted her was a hard stop—they would be up fast.

  The files were awkwardly stacked, so Missy of course ended up fumbling them as she put them on the floor. One file flipped over and half-spilled. She tried to stuff the documents back into it, but there were too many for the file and they just kept spilling out. While she was hunched over, she kept waiting for PJ to interject, to help her or tell her to just leave the file.

  He did neither.

  Missy finally gave up and just let the file lay sideways on the floor, its contents half-spilled. She couldn’t spend her ten minutes trying to reorganize this guy’s office.

  Missy sat in the chair.

  “What would you like to discuss?” PJ asked.

  Her patience was worn thin and his doing nothing while she was hunched over had really gotten under her skin. But she forced herself to be pleasant.

 
“You probably know why I’m here,” Missy said.

  PJ raised an eyebrow. “It’s about Karen, I’m presuming.”

  Duh. “Right. I went to her viewing last night.”

  “I’m very sorry,” he said quickly.

  “Thank you.” Missy gathered herself. “I spoke to Mrs. Wise, her mother, while I was there.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  Missy watched his eyes. They revealed nothing. “I just couldn’t believe what she told me, about Karen.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  So it was going to be like that. To get him to answer anything, she’d have to pull teeth. Missy didn’t understand the standoffish attitude. If he didn’t think it was murder, that meant the case was closed so there was no reason to hold any details back.

  “She told me that Karen was infected with tape worms.”

  His face twitched. “Yes.”

  “That’s true?”

  He nodded.

  She waited for him to expand on his answer, but PJ just sat there.

  Missy went on. “How do you think that happened?”

  PJ sat forward and folded his hands. “Missy, I understand how difficult this must be for you.”

  So he was going there already? She hadn’t even shared what she knew and he was ready to brush her off. Her stomach churned.

  “Okay, I’m just going to come out and say what I’m thinking then,” Missy said. “Karen never, not in a million years, would have ingested tape worms.”

  PJ held her gaze. “There’s no doubt about it.”

  Missy groaned. “I know she was infected. What I’m telling you is someone gave them to her.”

  PJ’s lips grew thin. She could tell he was trying to think of a delicate way to say what he had to say.

  “Missy, your friend was a member of an extreme dieting group—”

  “That doesn’t mean she was an extreme dieter!”

  He talked right over her. “According to you, her parents, other members, people she worked with, and her other friends, Karen struggled with her weight her entire life.”

  “So have I.”