Pains and Penalties: (A Geeks and Things Cozy Mystery Novella #1) (Geeks and Things Cozy Mysteries)
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Kalina took a sip of tea. “Like yesterday with poor Mrs. Davies.”
Mrs. Grant fussed with her teacup, turning it one way and then the other atop the saucer. She wouldn’t meet Kalina’s gaze and, for longer than felt comfortable, she kept quiet. Kalina had time. She could be patient if that’s what it took to make this woman open up about whatever she suspected.
“You know if you know something or even suspect something you should tell someone. The police maybe.”
“I don’t know about that. What do I know? I’m just an old lady.”
“But Mrs. Davies … Agatha … was your friend, wasn’t she?” Kalina motioned to the framed photo on the mantle. “It certainly seemed like it.”
“Oh, we were. We’d grown up together, gone to school up through college and came back to Ellesworth after graduation. We met our husbands in the same circles. Goodness, that was a long while ago.”
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary after you left the pastry judging?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Was anyone paying more attention than usual to her?”
“Not that I recall. I mean she always had everyone swarming to place an order of her cake. It was just like every year.”
Kalina pursed her lips, trying to figure out how best to phrase her question. “You said you think she was murdered. Did you notice if anyone went near her tea before she fell?”
“I wasn’t paying attention. To be honest, I was just so upset about losing to that little…” Mrs. Grant took a long swallow of tea, cutting off the tirade.
“You’re sure you didn’t see anything at all? You didn’t happen to notice if she made her own tea?”
“I think someone brought it to her maybe.” Her brow furrowed. “Yes, I think someone brought it to her but I don’t know who. Do they know what it was?”
Kalina shook her head. “I don’t know. But if it was something in her tea, I’d guess poison.”
Mrs. Grant set her teacup down, hands trembling. She still wouldn’t look Kalina in the eye. “It was lovely of you to stop by but I’m afraid I don’t have time to visit any longer. Things to do.”
Kalina didn’t want to accept defeat but Mrs. Grant wasn’t opening up like she’d hoped. She took her time finishing the cup of tea before standing up. “I appreciate your time, Mrs. Grant. When should I pick up those scones?”
“They should still have them at the fair. You can get them there.” Mrs. Grant shuffled toward her as if to shoo her out of the house.
What was she hiding? Kalina had no choice but to move to the front of the house with her host. There was one other thing she could try. “You know I heard they found some sort of threatening note in Mrs. Davies’ house. It said something about lying being a mortal sin. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
“N-no. I’m afraid not. I wish I could point you or the police to who would have wanted to hurt my friend, but I’m useless.”
Kalina tried to give a sympathetic smile. “Thanks again for having me over.”
Mrs. Grant shut the door behind Kalina, shoving her unceremoniously into the screen door. She let out a little grunt as the scratchy mesh snagged on her shirt and a loose wire scraped along her forearm. There was definitely something going on with Mrs. Grant. Just as she eased the screen door shut behind her, her phone beeped with a text message from AJ: “Can we talk?”
She sent back a quick note letting him know he could stop by the shop. In the meantime, she had some research to do and the shop was as good a place to do it as any.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was a short trip from Mrs. Grant’s house to Geeks and Things. Kalina pulled into the back lot and headed in through the game room. It warmed her heart to know that she was touching so many different facets of the community with the shop. She was far surpassing what her father would have expected of her. The shop was empty as she settled behind the counter and pulled up a browser on her tablet. She stared at the search page that popped up, momentarily at a loss for what to do. She shook the sudden dragging feeling—the coffee from that morning was wearing off—and typed away. She searched for symptoms of poisoning. The search engine helpfully populated the phone number for Poison Control. She scrolled through the thousands of results and was about to click on one just as the bell sounded above the door and AJ walked in. Dark smudges under his eyes and pale skin signaled he hadn’t slept much the night before either.
“Hey. How you holding up?”
Her nephew hiccupped a breath and burst into tears. She laid the tablet aside and rounded the counter to fold him into a hug. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
“I just feel so guilty. I should have done something. CPR or I don’t know. I shouldn’t have just stood and watched.”
“It happened so fast I don’t think there was anything you could have done.”
He sniffled and scrubbed at his tear-stained face with the backs of his hands. In that moment he was the little boy she’d babysat for on summers home from college, so young and vulnerable.
“Have you given your statement to the police yet?”
“No. Can you come with me? Mom offered but I’d feel better if it was you.”
“Sure. Let me just grab a few things.”
She retrieved the tablet and keys, killed the lights and followed her nephew outside. The police station was only a five minute walk from the shop and so they headed down the sidewalk side by side. Most people were back down at the second day of the fair so the streets were empty in this part of town. Tragedy wouldn’t keep them down for long. Sure, there’d be an article in addition to the obituary for Mrs. Davies but with so little to go on, even the hungriest of journalists wouldn’t print anything just yet.
“Did you find anything out from the police about what killed her?” AJ shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
“No. But I talked to Mrs. Grant this morning. She knows something. I can feel it. I just need to find a way to get her to open up to me more.”
“Did you offer to buy her scones?”
“I did,” she said with a little laugh. “I did mention something I know Chris found at Mrs. Davies’ house that might convince her to speak up.”
“What’d he find? How do you know?” His mood was definitely improving as they walked.
“Well, I was over making a special delivery to Mr. Morgan and Chris was across the street with forensics. I saw they’d found a note of some kind.”
“What’d it say? Come on, Aunt K., don’t hold out on me.”
“Your mom wouldn’t want me getting you involved in this.”
“I’m already involved.”
“Okay, fine. But this stays between us. It said, ‘Lying is a mortal sin.’”
They’d arrived at the station and Kalina held the door open for AJ to go first. The conversation died as soon as they crossed the threshold. Ellesworth PD was a small unit with about twenty uniformed officers, seven or eight detectives, one lieutenant, one sergeant and the captain. Most of the force was down at the fair again. No doubt Captain Cahill had wanted a double patrol given the previous day’s events. Chris sat at a desk poring over a report. Kalina nudged AJ forward.
“Uh, Detective Harper, I’m here to give my statement,” AJ said, inching closer to Chris’s desk.
Chris jumped in his chair and gaped at AJ for thirty seconds before regaining his composure. Kalina settled in a seat at a vacant desk nearby. “I told you I’d bring him by today. I keep my word.”
“I appreciate it.” He sounded tired. Chris pushed the file aside and opened a document on his computer to start taking down AJ’s recollection.
Kalina turned her attention to her tablet. Luckily, the department was cheap enough not to password protect their Wi-Fi and she logged on to continue her internet search on poisons. She wasn’t sure it would yield anything helpful but it was worth a shot. By the descriptions she found after clicking through a couple of sources, she was c
ertain that this was the cause of death. The type of poison was less obvious. The coroner’s office had probably done a toxicology report but those took weeks to come back, didn’t they?
She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice the interview was finished until AJ snapped his fingers in front of her face. She blinked until he came into focus. He seemed relieved to have given his official statement. Kalina licked her lips and swallowed to dispel the cotton ball feeling in her throat.
“I’m all done. Do you want any help back at the shop? Maybe figuring out what inventory to order?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure, that would be great.”
She turned to thank Chris for his time but he’d disappeared. She fixed her nephew with a quizzical look but he just shrugged. The file he’d been reading was still sitting on his desk. If he’d really wanted to keep her from snooping he would have put it in a drawer or somewhere less obvious and open. AJ said nothing as she crossed the short distance to Chris’s desk and bent over the file.
Kalina was wrong. Apparently, Chris had specifically asked the lab to rush the toxicology report. Initially, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. The graph with thin spikes of different items in her blood was like reading a foreign language when you didn’t know one word. She flipped through to a different page but it only listed a myriad of technical jargon.
“Uh, Aunt K., you might want to hurry. He’s coming back.”
Kalina glanced around but Chris was nowhere to be seen. Still, she trusted AJ not to let her down. She turned to the last page with the summary paragraph. Bingo! According to the test done, it showed that Mrs. Davies had high levels of inorganic arsenic in her blood at the time of her death. She had definitely been poisoned.
“Aunt K., come on,” AJ hissed and made a move to tug her away from the desk.
She flipped the file closed and set it back on the desk where she’d found it. Exhaling a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, she and AJ headed for the front of the building.
“Hey, Kal,” Chris said, appearing with a coffee cup in hand.
“Yes? Did you need me to give a statement, too?”
“No. I was just wondering, did I hear right that you’re planning on running a game of Cards against Humanity at the shop?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“Well, count me in.”
Warmth crept up Kalina’s neck and settled into rosy blushes on her cheeks as she nodded and turned around, wrapping a shaking arm around AJ’s shoulders. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from embarrassing herself. She hadn’t ever thought she would be reconnecting with an old flame. They made it through the front door before her cell phone rang. The call ID said it was from the shop, which meant it was call forwarding.
“Hello, this is Kalina Greystone.”
“This is Margaret Grant. I needed to tell you… Agatha wasn’t the only one who got that note. I got one too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kalina stopped mid-step. Had she heard that right? Did she just get a break in this whole thing? It sure sounded like it. She forced her voice to work. “Oh. I can come right over.”
“No, not here. The church down on Shore Drive.”
“All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She ended the call and turned to AJ. “That was Mrs. Grant. She wants to talk.”
“About what?”
“She said she got the same note the cops found in Mrs. Davies’ house. This sounds like someone is targeting them. I just don’t know why.”
AJ turned back to the front doors of the police station. “Should you tell Detective Harper about this?”
“Not yet. I don’t know what she knows. I don’t want to waste his time if it’s nothing.”
“But she said she got one of those creepy notes.”
“Saying it and meaning it are two different things. I’ll let him know if anything solid comes out of this.”
“Okay. What should I do now?”
“Go to the shop. I’ll see you back there when I’m done.”
They parted ways and, just as Kalina headed down Main Street toward the beach, she caught Chris watching her from a window. He just stared at her. She hoped he didn’t try to follow her. She needed to find out if Mrs. Grant was telling the truth on her own. She needed to know she could do this.
The walk to Shore Drive was calming. It allowed Kalina to gather her thoughts and prepare for what she needed to ask Mrs. Grant. The Ferris wheel at the fair rose up in the distance off to the right. Even from this far away she could see the blobs that meant people were riding it. The thought of going back there, to where Mrs. Davies died, turned her stomach. She turned her attention to the simple, stone church up to her left. According to town history, it had stood since the 1700s. The interior had undergone renovation in the last few decades but the exterior stonework still held. She hadn’t been inside since she was a teenager at AJ’s christening. She didn’t have anything against churches or organized religion but, as an adult, she didn’t find faith particularly comforting or necessary to her life. But it was the perfect place for a confession.
Kalina blew out a breath as she eased open the doors to the narthex. She hadn’t spotted Mrs. Grant’s car but it wasn’t that far of a walk, even for a woman in her 60s. The church was eerily silent. Not even the sounds from the fair permeated here. Despite being Sunday, services were cancelled in order to help support the fair and the charity. She moved deeper into the sanctuary and spotted Mrs. Grant seated in the second pew from the front. Time to find out her secret.
“Mrs. Grant?” she called, not wanting to surprise the woman.
“Here, dear.”
Kalina strode up to the front of the church and took a seat next to her. They stayed quiet for a few moments, each taking in the image of Christ on the cross adorning the front of the pulpit. A powerful image for sure. The silence started to press on Kalina like a weight.
“You said you got a note too.”
“Yes.”
Kalina turned to sit sideways in the pew. “Did you bring it? Can I see it?”
Mrs. Grant opened her oversized purse and pulled out a folded piece of white paper. She started to hand it over but Kalina held up her hands. “I don’t think I should touch it.”
The older woman unfolded the page and held it up so that Kalina got a good look at it. LYING IS A MORTAL SIN was typed in bold caps just like the one she’d seen Chris find in Mrs. Davies’ home. Whoever had killed Mrs. Davies appeared to be targeting Mrs. Grant as well.
“When did you get it?”
“Last week. It just appeared under my front door, folded like that. I thought it was a flyer from one of the children or a reminder about the fair. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw what it was.”
“Do you know who sent it to you?”
She folded the paper and shoved it back in her bag. “No. I don’t. But the message seems pretty clear. And it scared me.”
“Did Agatha get hers at the same time?”
“Maybe. She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Are you sure? Because it seems to me that whoever killed her might be coming after you too.”
“She didn’t say anything. And I mean what I said that I don’t know who might have sent it. But… I might know what this is all about.”
“Okay. Why don’t you fill me in on what’s going on?”
“There were three of us. A long time ago, thirty years or so, we did something”—she looked up at the crucifix—“unforgiveable. There was a crime and someone went to jail. But … it wasn’t the right person.”
“How do you know they weren’t the right person?”
“Because we lied. We said we saw what happened but we didn’t. Not as clearly as we thought we had when it happened anyway.”
“So you filed a false police report.”
Mrs. Grant shook her head and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “We did more than that. We lied during the trial.”
“Is there anything else that the note could be referring to?”
A single tear slid down Mrs. Grant’s cheek. “No. I don’t think so.”
Kalina turned back to the front of the church. A chill slithered down her spine as she considered her next question. “Who was the third person?”
“Cynthia Ellicott.” Mrs. Grant’s shoulders sagged but Kalina couldn’t determine if it was relief or resigning her friend to the fear of being next on the killer’s hit list. “But she won’t talk to you. She’s gotten rather ornery in her old age.”
Kalina had a vague memory of Cynthia babysitting her and Jillian when they little but couldn’t recall her face. It had to be the third woman from the photo on Mrs. Grant’s mantle. “Thank you for telling me all of this. You should take that note to the police. They can keep you safe.”
Mrs. Grant didn’t respond to Kalina’s suggestion. That was all right. She’d tip Chris off as soon as she got back to the shop. She needed an internet connection so she could do a little research on the trial. That was the key to finding the killer.
CHAPTER NINE
Kalina made great time getting back to the shop. She pushed through the front door and stopped dead in the doorway. Chris stood at the counter, chatting with AJ about what looked like a video game. Both looked up when she entered.
“Hi, Kal.” Chris waved.
“Hi. What’s going on? I thought AJ gave you everything you needed and I didn’t need to give a statement.”
“This isn’t official police business. This is a social call.”
From behind the counter AJ gave her a wink and a quick thumbs up. Brat! Kalina was lost for words. One day back in each other’s orbits and he was already making social calls. The high schooler buried deep inside her jumped at the potential for rekindling their romance. But they were such different people now; it couldn’t be that easy to just fall back into each other’s arms.