Killer, Paper, Cut (The Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries)

by Campbell Slan, Joanna

  I studied the portion of the photo that had been salvaged. To the right was Father Joe. His head was turned and the expression on his face was one of great affection. Love even. But the object of this admiration had been torn off. All that remained was a hand resting lightly on his forearm. Squinting and turning the picture toward the light, I looked more closely. A little bell went off in my head.

  "Isn't that Laurel Wilkins' hand? I think I recognize the ring she's wearing."

  Mary Martha frowned at me. "You mean in the photo?"

  "Yep. Right here," and I passed the picture back to her.

  "Uh-huh. That’s her. Was her." Mary Martha's lip curled.

  Dolores sniffed. "The less said about that woman, the better."

  Chapter 31

  Sunday morning…

  Once the stress of the Halloween Crafting Spook-tacular was lifted from my shoulders, I felt giddy with relief. I hit the sack at three in the morning, and I didn't open my eyes until Detweiler climbed out of bed. I drifted between wakefulness and sleep. The promise of much needed rest kept me burrowed under the covers. At one point, I lifted my head and reached for the vinyl blinds. A quick peek outside told me that the day was rainy and blustery, perfect snoozing weather. No one would be in a hurry to walk Gracie in the park.

  A short time later, the savory fragrances of butter, bacon, and sugar tickled my senses awake. Brawny was making pancakes and bacon. Knowing that both my little ones were taken care of allowed me the luxury of rolling over and going back to sleep a little longer. As the world faded around me, as I smiled to myself. No wonder rich people hire nannies!

  Thank you, Gina, for this legacy! If you hadn’t agreed to hire a nanny, I would never have been in this enviable position.

  "Coffee? Be careful, it’s hot."

  I woke up to Detweiler sitting on the side of the bed with a big mug in his hands. Easing myself toward the headboard, I sat up and took the steaming beverage from him. He was wearing an old tee shirt and a pair of running shorts. His hair was damp, as was his shirt. He must have gone running in the rain.

  "Um, oh, my gosh! It’s ten o’clock! I can’t believe I slept so late."

  "You needed it. I hope you don’t have any more marathon scrapbooking sessions like that planned for the future."

  I didn’t answer. Of course I had long crops planned for the future.

  "Did you have a nice run?" I asked, plucking at the damp fabric of his shirt.

  "Yes, I got out and did my five miles before the rain started in earnest," he said. There was a weird look on his face. I could tell that something was seriously wrong. "We need to talk, honey, and I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m going to blurt it out."

  Stars swam around the edges of my vision. Oh, no, I thought. He’s leaving. He wants nothing to do with me. He’s bailing on us. On me and our baby!

  "It’s about Leighton," Detweiler continued.

  "Leighton?" My voice sounded like a frog’s croaking. "Is he okay? Is something wrong with him? Is he hurt? I’ve told him he needs to tack down those stupid rugs in his house."

  "No."

  I shivered, despite the hot drink in my hands. "Then what?"

  "He’s asked that we move out."

  "What?"

  "He’s given us until this coming weekend."

  "WHAT??" I couldn’t be hearing this right. "Is he having work done on the house?"

  "No."

  "When can we move back in?"

  "I don’t know. Possibly never."

  "But…but…I don’t understand." My eyes filled with tears. "Did I do something to make him mad? Did we do something? Is he in financial distress? What?"

  "Did you know he had a daughter? Melissa?"

  I hesitated. "Yes, right. I remember him saying something. They’re estranged. She won’t return his calls. He was married, young. This happened before his books took off."

  "Right," said Detweiler, taking the coffee cup out of my hands and moving so that he was right next to me. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled my head to his chest. "Well, she’s certainly returning his calls these days. Melissa must have gone to New York and visited Leighton’s agent. While she was at his office, she saw an article describing how Leighton had remodeled this place, to turn it into a writing studio. It also talked about how you moved in and fixed the place up. She saw the pictures after you’d done so much work. I guess you did too good of a job, babe. She’s decided that she wants to move in."

  "But she doesn’t even talk to her father! He hasn’t seen her in years!" I said with amazement.

  "She’s here now. I guess she’s come to the conclusion that she wants to have a relationship with dear old dad."

  "Okay, I get that. I’m all for family. Couldn’t she wait until after the holidays? Moving now will be so hard on Anya! And Erik. And me. And the baby. Not to mention what this’ll do to my work schedule. Moving is horrid. It took me months to move out of our big house in Ladue. This one isn’t that big, but it’ll still be a nightmare. And this is my busy season at the store! How on earth am I going to tell Anya? Erik is just getting settled and he loves Monroe! And…and…" I burst into tears. I cried and cried and cried.

  On one level I was thinking ahead to all the work and feeling totally overwhelmed. But deeper down, I was reliving a past wound. This was too much like my father throwing Catherine out of the house. Sure, Amanda and I never knew exactly what happened, but we’d heard shouting and the slamming of the front door and—poof!—our sister had vanished into thin air. Now it felt to me like another father was tossing me to the curb. Over the two years I’d lived here, I’d truly become attached to Leighton. I thought that he’d come to care about me, too. The fact that he’d cold-bloodedly decided to kick me to the curb forced me to doubt my ability to judge people.

  "He told you all this but he didn’t tell me!" I wailed.

  "Right. He says that he thought you’d take it better this way."

  "That mealy mouthed, white-haired coward! How dare he stick you with his dirty work."

  "Kiki, if I could have punched his lights out, I would have. I can’t remember the last time I was so angry with anyone. You know that I’m not a violent person by nature, but it was all I could do to keep from going for Leighton’s throat. I can’t believe that he’s doing this to you. To us. He gave me some cockamamie excuse about how as a parent, you’ll do whatever you can to rectify the mistakes you’ve made in the past. Instead of making it better, he only made the situation worse. At least for us! Why hurt someone today because you made a poor choice yesterday? You’ve treated him like a loving daughter, but where was this woman, huh? She has nothing to do with him until it’s convenient for her. So she’s blood. Big deal. Maybe blood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, because she sure hasn’t acted like his blood kin. Not until now when she wants something from him."

  "Yesterday at the crop, you were staring at me with this weird expression on your face. Pity. Why? You do still love me, don’t you?" and I gripped his tee shirt as though I could force him to stay with me forever.

  "I love you more and more each day. That look on my face? I was worrying about this very moment. About telling you the bad news. About how we’d deal with it. And I felt so bad for you because you’re marrying a man who doesn’t have a big bank account. If I had lots of capital, we’d have more options, but we don’t. Most of the time I don’t worry about money. But yesterday, watching you work so hard, seeing you bust your backside for your customers, and knowing what I needed to tell you, it made me physically ill. Hon, I am so, so sorry that I can’t fix this for you. For us."

  Chapter 32

  "We need a plan," I said. "Before we spring this on Anya, I need to come up with an idea about where we’ll live. Sheila’s house is out of the question. She called me the other day, and I’m worried about her."

  "Why? Isn’t the decorating going as planned?"

  "I guess. But it’s her drinking that’s got me concerned." I shrugged.
"Anyway, we can’t go there. Not with everything all torn up. We’d only get in the way of the contractors. So that’s not an option."

  "I agree," he said.

  "I’ve got that lump sum from Dimont Development," I said. "It’s not a lot but it could be a nice down payment."

  "Right, but we can’t rush into anything. Especially not a big purchase like this. I’ve been looking online and I even talked to that friend of yours, Pamela Bertolli? She says there’s nothing out there right now that would work for us. Especially in our price range. We need to be patient and maybe grab a foreclosure. We also need to sit down with a map and consider exactly which areas we’re interested in."

  He was right. I tended to rush into decisions, and he was more methodical. That made us a good pair, as long as we respected each other’s needs.

  "So we rent?"

  "I’m not sure that’s possible. First of all, I don’t want to give up first and last month’s rent and a deposit. Not when we’ve worked so hard to save money for the baby. Second of all, it’s not likely that any landlord would take us. You had a hard enough time when you just had a dog, remember? A big dog. Now we have two cats. We’d have to send the animals to my parents’ house, and although I know my mom would help us in a heartbeat, that would kill Anya. Probably upset Erik, too. Have you seen how he’s taken to Martin? And Seymour?"

  I nodded. "This reminds me of that old conundrum. A triangle. The sides are labeled fast, cheap, easy. You can pick any two sides, but not all three. We need animal friendly, within a reasonable distance of CALA and my store."

  "And available immediately."

  "And financially do-able."

  "With at least two bedrooms, two baths, or more."

  "With a fenced-in yard."

  "In a neighborhood that’s safe."

  "We’re talking Clancy’s mother’s house, aren’t we?" I asked. "Speaking of big decisions, I think we need to revisit the timeframe for getting married. Now that Anya’s come around, I think it ought to be sooner rather than later."

  "You know how I feel about that. Say the word and I’m there," he said.

  I buried my face in my hands. "I just can’t add more to my ‘to do’ list. Not now."

  "Take a deep breath. Let’s deal with housing. That’s an immediate need."

  I finished the last of my coffee. "I can’t imagine that any place other than the U City house would work. Not for us. Not under the circumstances. The space we need is there, being unused. My mother is in one bedroom on the ground floor. Amanda is in another room on the ground floor. Catherine told Clancy that she’s been sleeping in the office, because she likes knowing that if she wakes up at night, she can grab a book and read. The second floor is totally unoccupied right now."

  Detweiler nodded. "That’s the way I figured it. I didn’t know where Catherine was staying, but even if she was upstairs, I knew most of the second floor was empty. Why’s Amanda sleeping on the ground floor?"

  "Because she fell in love with that particular bedroom. It faces a romantic old willow tree, and there was a bird’s nest there that she liked watching. Also because it’s close to the backdoor, so if she had a late date, Mom didn’t need to know."

  "Can you stand living with your mother?" asked Detweiler. "Because as stressful as this is, I don’t want to make it worse for you."

  "I don’t know." I began to twirl a lock of hair. "That’s the honest answer. She’s been better since I told her to back off. I think she’s actually a tiny bit afraid of me."

  "Well," he said, as he stretched his long legs so that his bare toes touched mine. "If I need to scare her into good behavior, I will, because frankly I think we’re out of options."

  "Me, too," I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. "Thank goodness you have a big gun."

  "Want to see it?"

  Chapter 33

  I text-messaged Amanda and asked if we could meet her for lunch. Alone. Without Mom or Catherine. Although my sister Amanda and I had been at odds for years, we’d mended our fences when she came to live in St. Louis. We’d also taken vows to love, honor, and respect each other. That meant that when I sent her a text-message asking for a meeting, she cleared her calendar and didn’t ask a lot of questions. I was thankful for that.

  "Brawny, would you mind holding down the fort while Kiki and I go out together for lunch?" Detweiler asked the nanny.

  "Hold down the fort?" She looked confused.

  "Watch the kids and animals," I explained.

  "Of course. Anya was going to interview me for her creative writing class, so we had plans for this afternoon anyway. I can easily make the children sandwiches and macaroni and cheese."

  "Great," I said.

  "I’ll get the laundry done while you’re out."

  "Great-er!"

  More and more, I was thinking that I needed to send Lorraine Lauber the biggest thank you card ever crafted. Brawny was an absolute gem.

  "Where you going, Mom? Detweiler?" Anya asked.

  "We have a few details to iron out. Housekeeping items. Adult stuff," I said, trying to be vague without lying. Telling her we were being evicted would be difficult. I didn’t want to add more complexity to an already messy situation. Anya didn’t need to know that we were going to discuss this without her. She also didn’t need to come with. Detweiler and I had decided it would be best to present this as a done deal, rather than to add further instability to her and Erik’s lives.

  I hugged her goodbye and walked over to the sofa where Erik was playing Angry Birds on Anya’s phone. "Goodbye, honey," I said, and I offered him a hug. Absentmindedly, he accepted it and gave me an air smooch. I guess seeing Anya hug and kiss me had encouraged him to do the same. This transition had been so hard for him. Erik still cried for Gina, his mother. But this acceptance of affection showed he was feeling ever more comfortable with me. I walked out of the house feeling more cheerful than I had a reason to be.

  As we headed for my car, I glanced over my shoulder. The curtains twitched at Leighton’s backdoor. Detweiler saw the movement, too.

  "I certainly hope he has the good sense to stay away from me," I said.

  "I hope so, too. Because I am definitely not happy with him, and if he does anything more to further upset you, I might have to tell him what I really think."

  Detweiler opened the door on the BMW for me and grabbed my arm as I lowered myself onto the passenger side seat. "Kiki, I can’t remember the last time that I was so disappointed with someone."

  I didn’t say anything. I waited until Detweiler climbed into the driver’s seat and moved it back to accommodate his long legs. "Disappointed? I’m more than disappointed. I’m downright crushed. At the very least, why couldn’t he have told her that she had to wait until after the holidays?"

  "Because he feels guilty," said Detweiler, as he turned his head and looked over his shoulder while backing out of my drive. "Really, really guilty."

  Chapter 34

  "You have to be kidding me," said Amanda, as she opened her paper napkin and set it in her lap. Around us, happy patrons grabbed their brown trays and searched for tables. St. Louis Bread Co. is a favorite any time of the day, but lunchtime on Sundays, it’s packed.

  She continued, "Leighton Haversham has always seemed like such a nice man! And to spring this on you at the last minute? What does your lease say? Have you checked it?"

  "I never had a lease with him," I said. I took a large, long gulp of my iced green tea because I didn’t want to burst into tears. While I was at home, I’d managed to keep a smile on my face. I didn’t want Erik or Anya to realize how upset I was. But driving away from that little cottage, glancing at the mums I’d tended so carefully, seeing the door I’d painted so lovingly, got my dander up. I couldn’t believe what Leighton was doing to me. To us. To my children.

  I wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

  So he’d messed up with his daughter. Big deal. That didn’t give him the right to make my children miserable!

  "W
hen Kiki moved in, Leighton promised to come up with a lease, but he never did," explained Detweiler. "As time went on, it didn’t seem to matter. Anything that came up, Leighton dealt with her fairly. He told her over and over how much he enjoyed having her live nearby. He told me that she was like a daughter to him."

  "Right, and that’s why I work for an attorney. People can talk until they’re blue in the face, but when push comes to shove, if you don’t have a legal document, all bets are off." She buttered her piece of sourdough bread. "So what are you planning to do? Where will you go? Sheila’s house?"

  "She and Robbie decided to redecorate. They have hot and cold running painters, carpet layers, and a decorator. That’s not an option, I’m afraid," I said. My turkey with cheddar smelled delicious, but my tummy wasn’t cooperating, so I figured I’d better bite the bullet instead of my sandwich—and get the hard part over with. If Amanda was agreeable, that was that. If she wasn’t, Detweiler and I would have to reconnoiter.

  "Actually," said Detweiler, taking my hand in his, as a signal that he’d do the talking for both of us. "We’ve been over all our options, and they aren’t good. Leighton’s really put our backs against the wall. We’d like to buy, but this is too big of a decision to rush into. Besides, if we have to hurry through the purchase process, we might not get something we want for the long haul."

  "You’re right," said Amanda. "I can’t imagine you renting. Who’s going to rent to a family with two kids and two cats and a miniature horse? Not to be disparaging of Gracie. She’s wonderful, but most landlords will take one look at her and think, ‘Big dog, big problem.’"

  "So true," I said. "She needs a fenced in backyard. Great Danes are sight hounds. They see it, they like to chase it. She’s pretty good about coming back when I call her, but if a squirrel teases her, she’s off like a shot."