“Yes, she was shot in the back,” Kate said for the sixth time.
“By someone out there in the yard,” he supplied. It wasn’t that she hadn’t explained this or that Scott didn’t understand. It was that he couldn’t fathom it, not in terms of his intimate knowledge of Kate’s personality. Kate would’ve run after the gunman. Kate knew it, and she knew that Scott knew it.
“Yes. The window was open.”
“And when you ran to it...?”
“I was stunned at first,” she said quickly, eager to escape to her truck and get on with her life so as not to be tempted to turn in her own son. “I was so shocked because she had that gun on me, I thought I had been shot. I don’t know how long I was looking at my stomach, trying to make sense of it all. When I finally looked up she was on the floor, and I was able to guess what happened, but when I ran to the window there was no one out there. And I called you.”
Officer Garrison stood at the back of the room, jotting every word down into a notepad in such a way that was driving Kate crazy. Angling her gaze over her shoulder, she glared at him, and he stilled his pen, twisting his mouth to the side in apology.
“The most important thing,” she went on, nearing Scott, “is that Donna confessed to me that she killed Tommy. And she did this because Tommy set off the explosive that night, harming Lance Langley.” She stared at him with expectant eyes, but he said nothing. “You have to believe me. Poor Amelia is staring down the long barrel of a very costly criminal trial and she didn’t do it.”
“I hear you,” he said, but he was using his cop tone. He hadn’t sounded like her husband all morning. “But you also told me that Drake of Drake’s Firing Line incriminated Dean Wentworth for the explosion at the amusement park site. I have a lot to wade through, you understand.”
“Why would Donna say that? Why would she kill Tommy, if he hadn’t done it?”
“I don’t know, Katydid, and I can’t question her because she’s dead.” Scott walked to the open window and gazed out. After a moment, he turned on his heel, facing her. “If someone wanted Donna dead, why shoot her through the window? Why shoot her in the back?”
Kate shrugged as if she were at a loss for getting inside the logic of a killer.
“Do you think the shooter saw you?”
Again, Kate shrugged. “I doubt they were aiming for me.”
“That’s not what I’m getting at,” he said impatiently. “What if they were trying to protect you?”
She let out a nervous laugh. “Honey, you know I don’t have that many close friends, and those I do are at Sunshine Florist.”
His expression softened, but she could tell the gears in his fast-thinking mind were still turning.
“You have my statement,” she pointed out. “Do you need anything else?”
“And you were in the room because...”
“Because that Becky look-alike, Gillian O’Reilly, had been instructed—”
“To get the instructions,” he supplied, glancing at Tommy Barkow’s chemical equations for purifying cocaine, the drug that had been manufactured in the quaint town of Rock Ridge.
“I was only trying to help,” she concluded.
Scott closed the gap between them then pulled her in for a warm hug. “You have to stop doing that. What if the shooter had poor aim and got you? What would we do then?”
“Oh,” she said, brushing off his concern, “you know I have nine lives.”
“I’m afraid you’ve used them up. Haven’t there been nine murders since I’ve moved to town?”
“Maybe it’s your lives we should be worried about,” she teased, glancing up at him, but in the back of her mind, she did the math. In fact, with the killing spree two years ago during the Anarchist Freedom Network fiasco, there had been five murders. Now there had been three killings in the past month, making eight total. If Kate had nine lives, she had used nearly all of them playing with fire to catch the previous killers. She considered the possibility that she had better watch out. Donna Kramer was the ninth murder. Kate was out of lives. “So what are you going to do about Amelia?”
“It’ll take some time,” he said, urging her back so he could look at her easily. “I’ll have to file some paperwork, but I trust your account. What Donna confessed to you can be chalked up to a dying declaration, which will exonerate Amelia. Don’t say anything, though. I don’t want to get her hopes up in case I get resistance.”
“I won’t say a thing.”
Scott walked her down to the first floor of the inn, but held her back when they reached the entrance door. He waved at the butler to shut the door. The man had opened it in anticipation, but there was a wall of reporters outside that neither Scott nor Kate were eager to deal with.
“It’s going to be a long one for me,” he said, tucking a lock of her red hair behind her ear. “I might not be back until late. We recovered drugs from the shed out there, as well as in the mustard warehouse. We just got the warrant to search the amusement park site.”
“I bet Dean is going to love that.”
“Dean’s not going to have a choice. Needless to say, don’t wait up.”
“I never do,” she said, shooting him a weary grin. She drew in a deep breath, facing the entrance, and gave the butler a brave nod that signaled he could open the door.
The reporters began shouting. There were so many of them that all the voices and questions bled into a nonsensical drone of noise. She pressed through the crowd, batting away their microphone buds as soon as they shoved them in her face. She jumped inside her truck as soon as she reached it.
Backing out was a real challenge. The last thing Kate wanted to do was kill a reporter or two and get stuck here for another two hours. But soon she was driving off, watching reporters in her side-view mirrors chase after her on foot until they gave up. Just as she turned onto the road, she flicked her gaze at the rearview mirror and saw the most tenacious reporter of all, the blonde from the national news network. She could never remember her name, probably because she had never bothered to learn it. The woman keeled over and began gasping for air. Kate didn’t want to hand it to the woman, but she had definitely run harder than the rest.
As great as the wind felt on her hot skin, Kate had rolled down all the windows in her truck to get as much air as possible. She couldn’t stand the fact that she had lied to Scott. She tried to tell herself that simply omitting what she knew didn’t necessarily make it a lie, but she knew better. She hated secrets. She hated telling them and she hated sensing others were holding out on her. It was as though Jason’s omissions had rubbed off on her. Her son kept things from her and put pressure on her to do the same, and she had. How could she not? This was her son. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him, and yet this had been an extremely tall order. Kate already felt like it was eating her alive, and it had only been a few hours.
To try to clear her mind, she considered how she might use her day. She still had the equipment she had rented from Grayson’s to install a window in Jared’s new office at the mayor’s—Christ, that was another ironic piece to the twisted puzzle. Dean’s name had come up in association with the drug lords who had infiltrated Rock Ridge several times. First at Drake’s Firing Line, which Donna Kramer had contracted. But worse, Dean had been involved with Donna romantically. His own stepson, Bradley, had said as much. Why would Dean get involved with a kingpin? Donna hadn’t been that beautiful, had she? Had Dean been blinded by her beauty and looked past her evil?
Honest to God, Kate didn’t know what to make of it, especially since he had a lovely relationship with his wife, Jessica, or so Kate had thought. She didn’t know what disgusted her more—that Dean was using his position as mayor to further corruption in Rock Ridge or that he had cheated on his wife. If Kate were being real with herself, and she would like to think she was, she had to admit the latter bothered her more. Secrets were the cancer of love.
She cringed.
She had done just that with Scott. She had k
ept a secret.
Kate sighed with relief when she reached Grayson’s, pulling into the parking lot and cutting off any opportunity to analyze the finer details of all that was clearly driving her crazy. She slowed to a crawl and pulled her truck around the side of the building where it would be easiest for Larry to help unload the equipment she had rented.
When she came to a stop, she leaned on the horn. The clock on the dash read 11:48 a.m., which meant that Larry would be inside. He tended to take his lunch break later in the afternoon. A minute of silence passed and he hadn’t come out. She sucked in a deep breath and climbed out of her truck. The side-entrance door was ajar, so she slipped inside and made her way through the storage garage and into the store. As soon as she came into the bathroom aisle, she heard Larry chuckling and then a woman’s voice. That would explain why he hadn’t come running. His wife had dropped in.
Sure enough, Kate found Carly leaning over the counter, and Larry on the other side giving his wife a flirtatious smile. She stilled, taking in the sight of them. It was hard to believe that three years ago Larry had been angling to get a date with Kate. Back then, Kate had been consumed in the agonizing mystery of her husband’s disappearance and couldn’t imagine dating anyone. The fact of the matter, however, was that even if she had been ready to consider another man, Larry simply wouldn’t have been him. In so many ways, Scott had always been the man for her, and though she tried not to think of her years with Greg as lost time—her first husband had given her twin boys whom she loved dearly—deep down Kate knew Scott had always been the one. They had met in high school and fell in love. Everything about him had intrigued her, and when he had asked her to go out for milkshakes and a drive-in movie, Kate had been elated. The feeling never left her during their four years of high school together. And in a lot of ways, it never left her at all, even throughout her years of being married to Greg. When her husband went missing, Scott surged to the forefront of her mind, not because she was attempting a haughty escape of her shattered life, but because Scott represented comfort.
She had him. The man of her dreams. The man she was destined to be with.
And she had lied to his face.
A terrible burden was weighing down on her chest, and Kate wasn’t sure what she would be able to do about it. She loved Jason far too much.
Why was life asking her to choose between her husband and her son? Hadn’t she gone through enough already?
Carly jarred her from her reverie, asking with a smile, “Surprise, surprise, what are you doing here?”
“Returning some equipment,” she said, smiling, as well, but not for the same reason. It was just so nice to see them happy together. “If you have a minute?”
“Sure,” said Larry, rounding the counter and meeting her where she stood. “You parked out front or out the side?”
“The side,” she said, following after him, but Larry turned on his heel.
“No worries,” he said easily. He was certainly in a good mood, and Kate remembered the vow renewal and honeymoon that Carly had mentioned. “I got it. You just hang out. Oh, we got a coffeemaker, if you didn’t know.”
“Yeah?”
His brows shot up in confirmation and he shot her a smile. “Did, indeed.”
“I’ll make you a cup,” Carly offered. “So long as you tell me just who in the hell that woman was and why in the hell she stole you away from our breakfast date.”
If anything, Kate had been hoping to avoid the subject, so she decided to find a number of things interesting about the new coffeemaker behind the counter, noting out loud the make and model and asking about the flavor of coffee grounds, if they were organic and fair trade.
“You’re deflecting,” Carly pointed out in a stern, maternal tone. “Tell me what’s up. I have a sixth sense for these things.”
Kate came out with it the quickest way she knew how in hopes they could get past the topic and talk about lighter subjects, like the location of Carly and Larry’s second honeymoon and what the cocktails might taste like. “Donna Kramer. She was the amusement park executive who bought Meredith Joste’s house.”
“Okay,” said Carly, setting a mug of freshly brewed dark roast on the counter for Kate. Larry had gotten one of those Nespresso one-cup machines and already the brew smelled amazing. “What does that have to do with that woman?”
“You really can’t say anything,” said Kate. “You know how bad the reporters have gotten.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“Long story short, all those convicts getting out of prison have filtered into a drug ring.”
“Here in Rock Ridge?” she asked, astonished, but not so much so that she couldn’t get the Nespresso to percolate a second cup of coffee.
“The woman was Gillian O’Reilly, an ex-con who didn’t want to get roped into the drug trade, except that the drug ring got her out of prison early.”
“That’s what you’re calling them?” she asked, alarmed. “The drug ring? They don’t have names?”
“As of yet they don’t. Gillian was supposed to do something, and I went instead. Turns out Donna Kramer was the one who killed Tommy.”
Carly gasped as though this was the juiciest gossip she had heard in ages.
“Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, Carly. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” she said innocently.
“So that’s what happened. And Donna got shot.”
Carly gaped at her, and it looked comical to Kate.
“You’ll read about it in the paper,” she assured her. “I won’t say another word.”
Kate lifted the mug to her lips and sipped. After swallowing, the flavors hit her and she almost died, it was so good. “Oh, you better watch out,” she said. “I’ll be swinging by Grayson’s every morning instead of Bean There. This is too delicious.”
Carly laughed. “Damn right. And Larry’s customers love him. He’s increased his sales in the past two days, alone, just based on customers coming in, having a cup, and feeling so guilty about not buying that they end up stocking up on every supply imaginable.”
“I can see that happening to me,” she agreed.
Abruptly, Carly got back on topic in such a way that knocked the wind right out of Kate. “So this ties into Dark Donnie.”
Kate nearly choked on her coffee. “You heard about Dark Donnie?” Kate had only heard the street name hours ago when Jason had mentioned him.
“Come on, Kate,” she said, cocking her eyebrow up. “Rumors fly faster than viral gifs in Rock Ridge. I would’ve mentioned the alias at our breakfast date if you hadn’t run off.”
“What do you know about him?” she asked eagerly. “What have you heard?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “And it’s all rumor and hearsay, but I’m under the impression he’s good with firearms. I heard he’s a regular at Drake’s Firing Line.”
She considered the angle, drinking her coffee. Drake had been the one to implicate Dean Wentworth in the incident of purchased gunpowder used to blow up the amusement park site. But, in fact, Tommy Barkow had been the buyer. Maybe Drake had been covering for Dark Donnie.
“Any connection to Becky’s disappearance?” Kate asked, trying not to sound too eager.
Carly sighed and her big eyes grew even rounder. She pressed her mouth into a sympathetic line. “Becky’s been gone for weeks. Has there been any contact since the explosion?”
Kate knew what her best friend was getting at—that there was no hope of Becky coming home. No one felt guiltier about this possibility than Kate. Ordinarily, Kate would’ve been tenacious, stopping at nothing to find the kidnapper and return Becky home, safe and sound, restore the relationship she shared with Jason, be one big happy family again. But a number of murders had transpired since her son’s fiancée went missing, each seeming more pressing than the last. Kate wouldn’t go so far as to say she had dropped the ball, but she wasn’t sure there was a ball anymore. The trail had gone cold. And since the kidnapper hadn’t
reached out to the Langleys or made any contact whatsoever, she was entirely at a loss. What could she do?
“If all this drug stuff is connected,” Carly went on, supplying her with the answer she most needed to hear, “then surely it will all lead back to Becky. All I know is that Dark Donnie is some kind of marksman. He can hit a target no matter how far away, and he has a knack for showing up when the going gets tough. I heard that if there’s an innocent person around, and a killer on the loose, Dark Donnie will take them out. That’s why he has the pull and power he does. I hear he’s not all bad.”
A chill shuddered up Kate’s spine. She set her mug on the counter, losing all expression in her face. She hoped Carly wouldn’t notice, and luckily Larry padded through the hardware store at that very moment, joining them.
“Sweetheart,” Carly cooed. “Can I make you a cup?”
“I am going to be jumping out of my skin.” He laughed before nodding his head. “I’d love a cup.”
Kate gave him a moment to nuzzle into Carly’s shoulder before asking, “So are we good?”
“Yes, yup, sorry.” He smiled, cradling Carly from behind in his arms. “Equipment had no damage and you are all set to go.”
“Good,” she said in conclusion, all the more rattled by Carly’s comments of Dark Donnie with each passing second. “I’ll see you both later.”
Kate started for her truck. She wanted nothing more than to get home and enjoy the rare and brief respite between fix-it jobs. For reasons she couldn’t figure out, her jobs had slowed. If anything, it was a testament to the fact that when she fixed something, it stayed fixed. Kate wanted to take advantage, pour a hot bath, maybe open a bottle of wine, and submerge in suds with a good book. But when she climbed up behind the wheel her cell phone began vibrating in her overalls and she hoped like hell it wasn’t Scott calling to tell her Jason had been arrested for the murder of Donna Kramer.
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries, Season 2 (5 Cozy Mystery Books Collection) Page 30