Flower Power Trip

by James J Cudney

  Karen shook her head. “No one was out there, but I saw a shadow.”

  “Maybe it was the hostess or a patron walking in.” I waited for Karen to sit again.

  “I might be nervous. My family doesn't know about all of this.” Karen continued to explain what'd happened after she updated Hans about Cheney being his son. “He told me he couldn't think about it until after he found a way to compel his sister to remember everything about the experiments.

  “Did you help him stalk Ursula? Or Sofia… however he referred to her.”

  Karen nodded. “In the beginning, I collected information about her and dropped off a couple of notes. I thought if I could push his plan along, we'd be finished sooner. Then he and I could be together.”

  “What stopped it from happening?”

  “He'd broken into his sister's office and realized she'd created a whole new life for herself and had forgotten about him. Hans was angry that his sister had disfigured him. He wanted revenge.”

  “Was he going to kill her?”

  “I was afraid he might. That's when I stopped helping him and tried to ignore him. But he wouldn't let me. He blackmailed me.”

  “That he'd tell Doug and Cheney the truth?” I asked.

  “Yes.” We sat in silence for a few minutes while I debated my next move.

  “Karen, did you kill him?”

  “No, I told you I didn't. He kept forcing me to do things right up until the end.

  “Like drop that final note off for Ursula at the costume extravaganza?” I asked.

  “Exactly. I finally told him that was the last thing I'd do. He confirmed he wouldn't need my help after that night anymore.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “He showed me a knife. He was going to kill his sister after he got the formulas out of her.” Karen explained that Hans had followed Helena into the private employee offices to find a quiet place to bring Ursula once he confronted her at nine o'clock. Unfortunately, Cheney snuck back there delaying Hans from returning to the main room, ultimately giving the killer an opportunity to strike.

  Everything had finally fallen into place. Except understanding who killed him. I realized at that moment Karen didn't know Cheney had learned the truth. “Your son confronted Hans that night.”

  “I know. He was upset about the way Helena had been treated at her family's inn.”

  “No,” I said shaking my head. “Cheney overheard you and Hans talking about your past together. He knew the truth and tried to bond with his father.” I updated Karen with everything Cheney had told me at the bar.

  Karen was overwhelmed. “Cheney might have provoked him, but my son wouldn't kill him.”

  At that moment, Sierra poked her head in the office. “Mom, do you know where Dad is? The sous chef is holding the entire kitchen down, but he needs help.” When she saw me sitting across from her mother, she froze. “What are you doing here? I told you not to bother my family anymore.”

  Karen looked back and forth between me and her daughter, deciding what to do or say. “Kellan, I need to put out a couple of fires. Can we finish this conversation later or tomorrow?”

  Although I was concerned we might lose momentum if I let her go, she had a restaurant to run. I also needed to update April on what I'd just learned. “Sure, but you know this conversation needs to be held with someone else, right?”

  “As soon as I locate my husband and talk to my son. That's my priority right now. Goodbye, Kellan.” Karen pushed us out of the office and into the vestibule. She locked the door and told the hostess not to let anyone inside again. “Sierra, let's get the kitchen organized before I find your father.”

  When they disappeared, I walked to the parking lot. Had Doug overheard our conversation and left the restaurant? Based on what Karen told me, her entire family had good reason to murder Hans Mück. Which one actually did it? I put a call into the sheriff's office, but Officer Flatman informed me she was on an international line. He was not able to comment on whether she'd found out when Sierra Stoddard arrived in Braxton, but he'd tell Sheriff Montague I urgently needed to speak with her.

  Chapter 19

  On the drive to the farmhouse, I updated Maggie with my progress on the case. I couldn't tell her about Ursula's involvement, but I mentioned the Stoddards had a past connection with George Braun. “I'm not sure what it all means. It could depend on when Sierra Stoddard arrived in Braxton.”

  “I don't know exactly when she flew here, but she was back by the costume extravaganza. Karen asked me if her daughter could stop by that night. She even had time to rent a costume. I think she was some sort of nurse. I guess that's a hero, but there was a patch over her eye.”

  “Dancing with my cousin, Alex!” It suddenly smacked me upside the head why Sierra had seemed familiar. “You've been such a help, you can't even imagine.”

  “Do you think Sierra had something to do with George's death? She wasn't supposed to be at the party. It was a last-minute request, Kellan. I was shocked she got the costume from the shop. Dot told me she practically sold out after I recommended her place to all the guests to choose between a hero and a villain.”

  “I'm not sure, but she might know something she hasn't shared with anyone.” I told Maggie I needed to hang up and make another call. I tried to reach Alex, but his phone went directly to voicemail. I sent him a text message and called his assistant. He was affiliated with the Wharton County General Hospital and often turned off his cell phone if he was in surgery.

  While driving home, I tried to piece together what I knew about Sierra. She'd been skiing in Switzerland, she'd come home in time to attend the costume extravaganza, and she was fiercely protective of her family. Yuri had told us she overheard George fighting with a woman about something not being his fault. George was married, but the sheriff couldn't track down the name of his wife. Could it be Sierra Stoddard? Had George gotten mixed up with Sierra in Europe which was how he subsequently ran into Karen again?

  I arrived at Danby Landing excited to see my daughter but desperate to learn anything my cousin, Alex, knew about Sierra. I knocked on Nana D's door and entered the living room expecting to see my grandmother and my daughter reading or working on a puzzle.

  “We're in the kitchen cleaning up, brilliant one,” Nana D called out. “Guess who's here!”

  I wasn't in the mood for those kinds of games right now. “My parents?” I knew Eleanor was working at the diner. Who else could it be? I found out when I slithered into the kitchen.

  “Kellan, you look amazing!” Aunt Deirdre shouted while looking up from the counter. She must've forgotten she was drying a sharp knife. Her hand slipped, and a pool of red welled up leaving a bloody trail down her sleeve. “Ouchhh!”

  Emma screeched and covered her eyes. She didn't like the sight of blood and was known to faint upon seeing any. Nana D said, “Kellan, check on your aunt. I'll go to Emma.”

  “Raise your hand above your head.” I rushed to Aunt Deirdre and covered her wound with the towel. I also wasn't thrilled to see blood but had to see how deep the cut was. “Let me take a peek.”

  As I glanced at the situation, Deirdre laughed. “I'm such a klutz. Bollocks! It's all over the brand-new blouse I bought with Lissette at the airport yesterday.” While her finger looked tender and cut up, she didn't appear to need stitches.

  “I think if we put a butterfly bandage on it and wrap the wound tightly, you'll be fine,” I said.

  Once Emma calmed down, Nana D took Aunt Deirdre to the bathroom to attend to her injury. I breathed a deep sigh of relief followed by one of the biggest aha moments I'd ever had.

  April had shared with me that George was stabbed twice. If his killer pulled the knife out of his body to stab him again, blood had to have splashed on the killer. It was a costume extravaganza, everyone dressed up—even the servers rented costumes for the night. If there was blood on the killer's costume, the store might inadvertently know who murdered George Braun.

  I called the cost
ume shop, but they were closed for the evening. It was after eight o'clock on a Sunday, of course, they'd be closed when I needed them most. I left a message to call me back the next morning as soon as they could.

  Once Aunt Deirdre was all patched up, we sampled an apple pie Emma and Nana D had baked earlier that day. Deirdre explained that Lissette had traveled all the way to her sister's place only to find out she'd passed away two days before. Since Judy was new in the small town where she stayed, no one knew who her family was, to inform them about her death. Lissette was heartbroken and begged Aunt Deirdre to meet her at a London airport, so she had someone to fly home with. They'd only arrived in Braxton that afternoon, but Aunt Deirdre would check on her friend again soon. As I said, it was always funerals and weddings that brought her home to Braxton. No one was getting married that she knew, so I counted this as a visit for a funeral. Lissette would be arranging services for her sister in the near future at their family funeral home.

  I took Emma home and tucked her in bed since she had school the following day. When I went back to my bedroom, I checked my phone. Fern Terry sent me a text message that I'd dropped a piece of mail near her the other day when we met up in the student union building. I had a postcard from someone in Savannah, Georgia which she'd give to me on Monday. For now, she sent a screenshot of the front picture and back message:

  You wanted to move here after a trip to the hostess city of the South. Imagine what that would have been like for Emma to grow up in the grand world of antebellum style. Too bad you broke your ankle and couldn't stay the whole week to experience the possibilities. Maybe another trip without so much pain is the answer.

  Savannah was a gorgeous city, and I wanted to move there at one point. I preferred more humid climates and missed Los Angeles weather. But Francesca was mistaken again. I'd broken my ankle at the airport on the day we left Savannah. It didn't interrupt our trip at all. Maybe the flight home was worse than usual given I was doped up on painkillers the whole five hours. Had she confused another one of our trips? It didn't make sense, but other messages were more important at the moment.

  Alex left me a voicemail stating he'd only met the girl at the costume extravaganza. Her name was Sierra, they'd spoken about her visiting her parents for a few days and that she lived in London. When I called him back, he was on rounds and had to keep it quick. “Nope, I danced with her twice. She talked to a few other people. Honestly, don't recall who.”

  “Did you ever see her enter the private office area?” I asked my cousin.

  “I don't know. Right after you came running by us, she excused herself to go to the ladies' room. I never saw her again that night.”

  “What was her costume? A nurse?”

  “Yes, she was Elle Driver from the movie, Kill Bill. Remember the evil nurse Daryl Hannah played?” Alex had to visit with a patient and hung up after mentioning a day to have dinner next week.

  At least I'd learned from my cousin what Sierra's costume was and that she'd disappeared just before George had been stabbed. Could she have left the event because she had blood on her costume?

  Sheriff Montague had also left me a message that she'd been following up on the leads for George Braun's wife and would connect with me in the morning to discuss whatever I'd learned that night from my discussion with Karen Stoddard.

  Despite an early bedtime, I slept poorly given everything on my mind. Visions of Francesca chasing me around Braxton plagued my dreams. Every time I'd try to catch her, she'd vanish into thin air. At another point during the night, I was tied to a pole while four women in masks chanted in a circle. One by one, each removed her mask. Myriam, April, Sierra, and Karen were casting spells to torture me. Shortly before I woke up, a mysterious shadowed figure kept plunging a knife in my gut. I'd come back to life each time, and just as I was about to open the door to see who killed Hans, I'd die again. Maybe Eleanor would be able to interpret it all because I certainly couldn't.

  After dropping Emma at school the next morning, I met Connor at the gym for an hour of weights, then checked in with Maggie. Helena was Judge Grey's first case of the day. “Is she ready?”

  Maggie sighed. “I couldn't talk with her yesterday. She was only allowed to meet with Finnigan. He said she's been cooperating with him.”

  “I wish I could be there, but I've got class. Then I'm heading over to the costume shop you told me about. If the killer got blood on his or her costume, we might be able to solve this more quickly.” I knew we were getting closer, but it wasn't far enough for me to slow down and let the sheriff handle it on her own. My curiosities were aroused, and there was little chance of this dog letting go of his bone.

  After Maggie and I hung up, I chatted with Ursula and Myriam. They were having coffee in Ursula's office before the day got too busy. Ursula said, “I met with Dean Mulligan. I expected better of the man, but it seems retirement should be looming for him next semester.”

  Ursula explained that Dean Mulligan had developed a crush on Dr. Anita Singh over the last year. Both had been single and weren't too far apart in age, but he knew, as her boss, nothing could happen between them. Anita begged him not to hire George. She'd known of the man's ruthless and underhanded schemes from various international science conferences. Mulligan had already signed the contract and had to play arbiter between them for weeks. George later discovered Mulligan's secret crush and tried to extort more money from him for the Mendel flower show and his own personal experiments. The dean refused at first, but to protect Anita from any backlash, he'd ultimately given in. He'd confronted George at the Roarke & Daughters Inn the afternoon of the costume extravaganza, which is what Yuri overheard and used to get favors from the dean. When it didn't work, she'd exaggerated the story to get even with Dean Mulligan.

  “It's all very childish. It doesn't explain why the dean's costume was so disheveled later in the evening,” I noted. What had the dean done to Anita?

  Myriam hooted. “I can explain that. His Zeus getup consisted of a rather large Greek robe. Each time the man used the restroom, he needed to pull the whole thing off. It just never got put on the same way again. What a fool!”

  While Myriam made sense, it clearly pointed out a silly mistake I should've realized myself. “That leaves us with figuring out what Anita Singh's hiding.”

  “Pish! I know Anita, and she's much too gentle to stab someone. I'm now leaning toward Sierra Stoddard. She has a motive, and I think she had the opportunity,” Myriam retorted.

  “The timing is really tight, but she could've snuck into the courtyard right after I saw her on the dance floor and stayed in hiding until Cheney and Helena left,” I said.

  “I was too busy telling you all about the note I'd found. I didn't pay attention to anyone walking through the double doors to the private offices while we were behind the silk draperies,” Ursula reasoned out. What came out of your discussion with Karen?”

  “She hasn't gotten back to me. I suspect she and Doug are getting their stories straight, or she's avoiding me until I force the issue again,” I explained. Ursula wanted to talk with Cheney, but I convinced her to wait until we found out who killed her brother. She could already be in a dangerous position because of him.

  I left to teach my two-hour class for the morning, then grabbed a snack bar out of the vending machine. There was no time to waste on lunch. Maggie texted that Judge Grey was delayed, and Helena would see him at one thirty. Finnigan had gotten additional information from Detective Gilkrist about a new lead the sheriff was on top of. Maggie didn't know if it hurt or helped her sister's case. April still hadn't returned my second call from the night before. I wanted to text her, but we really weren't close enough that it felt appropriate to blur the lines between us.

  I hightailed it to the costume shop on the town border in Woodland. The costume shop hadn't called, but an emergency to them and an emergency to me were probably two different things. I parked the SUV and climbed down a few steps to the garden-level floor of a brownstone building
.

  I walked through the door, noticing dozens of mannequins artfully arranged in scenes. Each held a sign describing the type of costumes and which floor and section to find them in. The building had five floors and was divided into four quadrants or rooms on each one. In the lower garden-level were steps going up to the second floor and another door leading to the cellar. They probably kept all the returned costumes in the basement either to be cleaned on premises or sent out to a separate facility.

  There were two other patrons nearby. One was flipping through a book in the front parlor, another was talking to an older woman wearing a tie-dyed dress and light-colored wrap around her shoulders. She had a peace sign tattoo on her left wrist. When the guest left, I marched to the counter, introduced myself, and asked if she'd listened to my voicemail.

  “I haven't been able to return any messages today. My new girl didn't show up, and Mondays are always rough. People need to chill like we did in the sixties,” she mumbled and huffed.

  “Does that mean you have an answer for me or no?” I said with a scrunched-up face.

  “You asked about a Tarzan costume for a weekend getaway? Lay it on me, dude.” The woman had a name tag pinned to her waist that caught my attention as she flowed from side to side in a daze.

  Was she on the wacky stuff right now? “Ummm… no. I called about all the costumes that were returned from Braxton's Memorial Library extravaganza.” I was, however, curious who called about the Tarzan costume. I would never show that much skin, but more power to someone who felt comfortable in their skivvies in front of the entire world. “Listen, Dot, this is really important. I need to know if a certain costume was returned.”

  “All my customers are important. What's your bag, man? This shop is my pride and joy. I take my job very seriously, and I make sure I do everything I can to help them out.” She caught her ring on the wrap and spent thirty seconds trying to remove it. “Well, ain't this a gas!”

  When desperate exasperation bubbled inside me, I reached over to help her. “Let me.” After it came loose, we laughed about the chances of it happening again. I really didn't care, but I knew I needed to be as sweet as pie. Not only would Nana D whack me upside the head for treating one of my elders poorly, she passionately believed you got more answers by being kind. And with this hippie, I'd have to be extra patient. “Could you tell me if someone returned a costume with a stain? Something red all over the front.”