Kiss 'N Tell

by Kathi Daley

  “So what do you think?” I asked Parker after we left the bar.

  “I think we might have found our thief, assuming, of course, that Kyle’s wallet was actually stolen, and he didn’t just drop it.”

  “I agree that makes for a good theory, but it sounds like the woman came to the bar after Kyle had already made a deal with Kia. It’s doubtful he even spoke to her.”

  “Cory said the woman sat down at the bar while Kyle and Kia were still there. It sounds like he took out his wallet to pay for the drinks after she’d sat down next to him. If she saw his wad of cash, she might have lifted his wallet before he even left the bar. I don’t know with any certainty that the woman is a pickpocket. She might simply leave with a guy and then rob him after she has him alone, but if she does know how to pick pockets and Kyle didn’t do a good job of getting his wallet tucked in tight, she might have taken it.”

  “So if she lifted the wallet but didn’t leave when Kyle did, she could be the thief, but not the killer.”

  Parker shrugged. “Perhaps. All we really have are guesses at this point, and it does seem that when exposed to the light of day, each guess turns out to be wrong.”

  “It seems if this woman is going to bars each night and picking out a man to rob, Deputy Todd would have heard about that by now.”

  Parker laughed. “Hardly. Men have fragile egos. It seems likely to me that if the woman chose insecure, vulnerable men, as I suspect she does, none of her targets would want to admit they’d been played for a fool. If I had to guess, this woman targets young men like Kyle, who won’t make a fuss even when their cash is stolen from them.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what we should do next. “Should we check with other bars? If this woman is a thief, chances are she makes the rounds.”

  “I agree with you. Gooseberry Bay doesn’t have a lot of nightlife, but I know of four other bars we can check out.”

  Which is exactly what we did. By the time we’d spoken to the bartenders at all the bars in town, we were pretty sure that the blond-haired woman who left with a different man every night was the one who had taken Kyle’s wallet. The only question left in our minds was if she was also the one who’d lured him to the house and killed him.

  Chapter 12

  By the time Parker and I had finished running around town talking to bartenders, it was late afternoon. She wanted to head over to the morgue to see if she could get a peek at the report from Kyle’s autopsy, and after that, she planned to try to get a few more details out of Deputy Todd relating to Kyle’s time of death and that sort of thing. I decided to go back to the cottage, so after taking me home, Parker promised to either come by or call me later if she had news to share.

  I felt bad that the dogs had been cooped up so much lately, so I decided to change into my running clothes and head out for a nice long jog up toward Piney Point.

  It had been a couple days since I’d heard from Adam. When we last spoke, he’d told me he was heading to Italy to meet with Warren Cornwall but that he’d only be there for a few days before returning home. I had to admit that I’d been giving the situation surrounding my parents’ deaths and Marilee’s decision to run with Avery and me a lot of thought since our last conversation. Assuming the story Marilee had told Olivia and Olivia had shared with Adam was true, I wondered what that meant for me and the life I was just starting to build here in Gooseberry Bay.

  Probably nothing, I decided. Even if Adam’s inquiry came back with the verdict that I was indeed the heir to this large estate and that Warren had killed my parents in order to get to that estate, I wasn’t sure I’d pursue anything. Sure, I guess there was a part of me that wanted Warren brought to justice for his part in my parent’s deaths, assuming he even played a role in their deaths, which after talking to Adam and looking Warren up on the web, seemed sort of unlikely. If my research had uncovered an evil and uncaring man, that would have been one thing, but Warren and his wife, Giovanna, didn’t appear to be either evil or uncaring. As far as I could tell, they were part of a loving family and used their wealth and power to help others.

  What if, as Adam had suggested, Marilee was wrong and Warren hadn’t tampered with the plane my parents were traveling in when it crashed? What if Warren hadn’t wanted to hurt Avery and me? What if the entire complicated conspiracy had simply been in Marilee’s mind, and taking to the road and upending the life Avery and I might have shared had never been necessary?

  I wondered if Warren looked for us after Marilee swept us away. I supposed he must have. It would have seemed odd had he not looked for us, given the fact that he’d been managing the trust by that point.

  As the dogs and I neared the back gate of Adam’s estate, I slowed my pace. The idea that the estate in Italy should have been passed down to Leora and then to Warren from the beginning had taken root in my mind, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to shake it free. As far as I was concerned, if the estate should have been Warren’s all along, then it should be his now. And if he really hadn’t tampered with the plane my parents were passengers in when it crashed, then it was possible that he’d never done anything wrong.

  If he hadn’t, might there still be a chance to have some sort of a relationship with him?

  Turning back toward the cottage, I once again picked up the pace. This whole thing was literally making me crazy. One minute, I was picturing the steps I would take to bring the man to justice if our research proved that he had killed my parents and planned to kill Avery and me. Then the next minute, I was picturing family dinners with Warren, Giovanna, and their children once we’d cleared things up, making way for us to become a real family.

  Of course, the number one image that had been playing in my mind had to do with finding Avery alive and happy. It was a hopeful daydream, which involved happy tears and a lot of hugging. I wondered if she’d married and had children. Could I be an aunt and not even know it? I was pretty sure that even if I was never able to prove conclusively whether or not Warren was a good guy or a bad guy, I think I could live with that. But if I never found Avery? Well, that was a reality too painful to even consider.

  By the time I returned to the cottage, I was covered in sweat. I refilled the dog’s water bowls and then dished out their dinner before heading to the shower. Perhaps I’d call Jemma and see if she wanted to come over. She’d been going out of her way to steer clear of Josie and Val, so chances were that if she was home, she’d appreciate an invitation to join me for a bottle of wine and a nice long gab session.

  As it turned out, Val and Josie had gone out for the evening, so Jemma invited me over to her place for takeout pizza and a really good microbrew she’d gotten for Christmas and had been waiting to enjoy. She told me to bring the dogs and plan to spend the evening. By the time I arrived, Parker had called to let me know that she had news, so we invited her to join us as well.

  “So, what’s your news?” I asked once Parker arrived and Jemma had placed an order for pizza delivery.

  Parker took a swig of the beer Jemma had chilled before answering. “I spoke to my contact down at the coroner’s office. She informed me that by the time the body of the victim had been brought in, he’d been dead for about two days.” She set her beer on the table in front of her. “She also told me that the official cause of death was a blow to the head rather than the stab wounds to his back, although she also admitted that due to the state of the decomposing body she couldn’t know that for certain.”

  “A blow to the head? Really?” I asked. “The only blood I noticed was from the stab wounds in his back.”

  “According to the coroner’s report, Kyle was hit from behind on the back of the head first. Once he fell to the floor, the killer stabbed him twice in the back, but the stab wounds to the back didn’t penetrate any organs. While there was quite a bit of bleeding, she didn’t think he’d bled out, so it’s unlikely that he would have died from the wounds had he not been rendered unconscious by the blow to the head that caused a cranial fr
acture.”

  I supposed the method in which Kyle died wasn’t all that important, but knowing that he was hit hard enough to render him unconscious indicated to me that the killer was most likely a man. “Was the coroner able to determine if the killer was a man or woman?” I asked, mostly to clarify my supposition.

  “In his report, the coroner wrote that the sex of the killer could not be conclusively determined, but that the blow to the head was delivered with enough force to indicate that the killer was tall and strong, thus probably a male.”

  “Or a really strong woman,” Jemma added.

  “Was Kyle’s wallet ever found?” I asked.

  “No,” Parker informed me. “At least it wasn’t on the body when it was brought in. According to the coroner’s report, the only personal possessions collected were a set of keys on a Seattle Seahawks key ring, a gold ring that appears to be a class ring of some sort, and a five-dollar bill that had been wrapped up with three singles. It appeared like Kyle had been given change at some point and then just stuffed the change in his pocket rather than taking the time to put it in his wallet.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We know that Kyle was murdered the night he was seen leaving the bar with Kia. We know that he was missing his wallet, and it appears he never found it. We know he died due to a blow to the head, and we suspect that the killer was tall and strong. What else do we know about the incident?”

  “My contact down at the coroner’s office told me that Kyle’s body had lipstick on the neck,” Parker informed us. “Red lipstick. I called and spoke to Kia and asked her if she’d worn lipstick that evening, and she reported that she never wears lipstick and that if Kyle had lipstick on his neck, he hadn’t gotten it from her. That made me wonder if Kyle hooked up with someone else after Kia left to go back to her hotel.”

  “Someone like the tall blond in the bar,” I concluded. “I know Kyle didn’t leave with her, but if she did snag his wallet when he wasn’t looking and if he had an ID of some sort with a phone number on it, the woman could have used that information to lure him in later that evening.”

  “I imagine one of the bartenders can tell us if the blond-haired woman wore red lipstick. Although even if she did, it doesn’t prove anything but it feels important to know one way or the other,” Parker said.

  “The bartender we spoke to at the Rambling Rose told us the woman had been in there several times during the past few weeks,” I reminded the group. “Let’s start there, and if no one at the Rambling Rose remembers anything, we’ll widen the net.”

  As it turned out, the regular weekend bartender remembered the woman and was sure that she preferred bright red lipstick. He specifically remembered this due to all the empty glasses with lipstick stains he had to deal with after one of her visits.

  “Okay, so at this point, we strongly suspect that the tall woman with the short blond hair stole Kyle’s wallet and then used information contained within the wallet to contact Kyle and lure him to the empty house where she killed him,” I said.

  Parker looked doubtful. “I don’t know if that theory really holds up. First of all, why would this woman kill Kyle? Based on what we’ve discovered, this woman has a reputation for hitting on and then robbing gullible young men she’s able to seduce. Why would she veer from her regular protocol and kill Kyle? Based on what we know, she hasn’t killed any of her other robbery victims.”

  “Parker has a point,” Jemma said. “For this theory to work, the killer would have to have stolen the wallet, and then after he or she had the money, they would have had to have contacted Kyle and lured him to his death. If the motive behind the hookups at the bars was all about the money, as we suspect, why would the woman contact Kyle once she had his wallet? There seems to be a huge gap in this theory.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I guess it really isn’t working. It would be one thing if Kyle left the bar with the woman. We could argue that she lured him to the vacant house in order to rob him, but he fought back, and she killed him. But he left with Kia, not the blond. And we know he was missing his wallet when he went back to the bar. If the blond did lift it from his jacket, she would have done so before he left the bar the first time, so there would be no reason to contact him.”

  The room fell into silence while we all thought it over. Jemma opened a bottle of wine for anyone who preferred wine to a second beer.

  “What about the money?” I asked after a while. “We know that Kyle was carrying around a large amount of cash all week. Cory said he’d had it from the beginning, so he might have brought it with him, but no one ever said where he got it. When I spoke to Kevin, he indicated that Kyle was a college student with limited funds, just like the others are. It didn’t sound as if Kyle was the sort who would normally walk around with a couple grand. So the questions where did he get the money and why was he carrying it around all week remain unanswered.”

  “Ainsley has a point,” Jemma said. “Maybe Kyle’s death has nothing to do with hooking up with anyone. Maybe he met up with whoever he’d gotten the money from or was supposed to be holding the money for after leaving the bar the second time after he’d gone back to look for his wallet, and it was this person who killed him.”

  “One of my original theories did have to do with a drug dealer who’d provided Kyle with the product to move, and when Kyle showed up at the meet without the cash from the sale of the product, he’d killed him,” Parker shared.

  “Or maybe he stole the money, and whoever he stole it from caught up with him,” Jemma provided.

  “I think focusing on the source of the money makes a lot of sense at this point,” I said. “But how do we find out where the money came from when his friends don’t even know?”

  “Cory said that Kyle had the money on the first night the group got together,” Parker reminded me. “That means he brought it with him, obtained it during the trip from his home to Gooseberry Bay, or he obtained it here in Gooseberry Bay shortly after he arrived but before he met up with his friends. I think we need to take a look at Kyle’s movements on the day of his arrival.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Jemma asked.

  “We can see if we can find out when he arrived in Gooseberry Bay,” I spoke up. “We’ve had success getting information from the folks who monitor the cameras on the bridge in the past. If we compare when Kyle crossed the bridge with the time he met up with the group, perhaps we can confirm or deny the likelihood that he had time to steal the money, win it in a poker game, or pick up drugs to sell locally.”

  “I’ll see if I can find out what time Kyle crossed the bridge. Do we have a license number, make, and model for his car?” Parker asked.

  “I’ll call Kevin and ask him if he knows,” I volunteered. “I’ll also ask him if Kyle made the trip alone or if he came with someone else.”

  A call to Kevin netted me the information that Kyle had come to Gooseberry Bay alone and had met the gang at the rental house. The person Parker spoke to at the highway patrol netted her the information that the car matching the description provided by Kevin actually crossed the bridge the evening before the rest of the gang met up. We all agreed that it seemed that if Kyle had been in Gooseberry Bay for eighteen hours before meeting up with his friends, the likelihood that he engaged in some sort of activity during those eighteen hours that led to his death seemed a lot more likely.

  “What about the car?” I asked after Parker shared the results of her call to the highway patrol. “Did you see his car at the house where the body was found?” She looked at me.

  “Actually, no,” I answered. “There wasn’t a car of any sort in the driveway or parked on the street.”

  “I wonder if Deputy Todd was able to locate the car,” Jemma wondered.

  “I’ll ask him the next time we talk, but I don’t want to call him just for that unless we determine there’s a valuable clue to be had within the car,” Parker answered.

  “What about his cell phone?” I looked at Parker. “You didn’t m
ention a cell phone when you shared the personal possessions found with his body. Do you know if his cell phone was found?”

  She frowned. “No. I’m sure no one has mentioned a cell phone, but it would be nice to find it. If we had the cell phone and could gain access, we could see if Kyle called anyone on the night of his death. That might provide a clue as to what he did after he left the bar the second time after inquiring about his wallet.”

  I looked at Jemma. “Do you think you can hack into his account?”

  “Do you have his number?”

  “I can get it from Kevin.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Get the number, and I’ll give it a try.”

  Luckily, my call to Kevin netted us both Kyle’s cell phone number and the confirmation that Kyle’s cell phone hadn’t been at the rental house nor, as far as he knew, had it turned up anywhere.

  It took Jemma a while to get into Kyle’s cell phone records, so Parker used that time to make a few calls. By the time Parker had completed her calls, Jemma was in.

  “It looks like Kyle made one call at eleven thirty-seven on the night he was murdered. I tracked down the number, and it turns out it’s a landline for that bar out on the highway.”

  “Cubby’s Place?” Parker asked.

  She nodded. “That’s the one.”

  “I’ve never heard of a bar called Cubby’s Place,” I said.

  “It’s a real dive,” Jemma answered. “And it’s a good ten miles north of town on a road that parallels the highway but can’t be seen from it.”