by Kathy Krevat
Today she used a tie-dyed scarf to cover her dyed-black hair—no hairnets for her—and she wore a chef’s coat over her clothes. She was small and wiry, her thin arms somehow able to effortlessly carry three boxes of Meowio food at a time.
“Shoot,” Zoey said. “We’re out of apple juice.” She looked up at me, hoping I’d drive to the closest store to pick it up.
I sighed, starting to take off the hairnet and gloves that I’d just put on.
“Take some of ours,” one of the bakers said, handing it over. “It’s organic.”
“Thanks,” Zoey said, but she read the label carefully to make sure before setting it on the table. “I’m working on the sauté first. You want to get on the seafood one? The vitamins are measured out over there.” She pointed with her chin to a small plastic bin filled with powder of various shades of beige and yellow.
“Sure,” I said, heading into the storage area to grab dried blueberries, then into the refrigerator to pull out the fish and scallops, and then the freezer to get the vegetables.
I dumped it all on the counter, careful to keep the raw ingredients separate from what Zoey was working on. Then I pulled out the bin of measuring cups and spoons, took a look at the batch sheet, and got to work.
“Hey,” I said quietly to Zoey, the background noise of everyone’s work helping to keep our conversation private. I told her about the email from Twomey’s and the upcoming meeting with Lani’s business consultant. “Would you be able to work more hours for me if anything positive happens?”
“No prob,” she said. “Just give me some lead time to sort out my schedule.”
Oh good. One less thing to worry about.
* * * *
I’d made an afternoon appointment with Fawn, which she called a consultation. She wanted to make sure we were compatible as a life coach and coachee, or whatever she called her customers.
She’d directed me to avoid the front door and come to her office, which was a renovated garage. She lived in a neighborhood of McMansions that had at least two garages with most home owners using the second one for anything but a car garage, like for storage, workout room, or a man cave. I rang the doorbell beside a discreet copper plaque that said Fawn Escanso, Life Coach.
She answered right away, welcoming me into the beigest room I’d ever seen outside of a lawyer’s office. Not that I’d been in a lot of those. It was all tasteful and felt very Zen, with a small fountain gurgling in the corner.
Fawn had big brown eyes with long lashes like a Disney princess. I suspected that she practiced keeping them wide open, or perhaps I was jealous since anytime I caught myself in the mirror, I had a thoughtful scowl on my face.
Normally, Fawn seemed business-like and no-nonsense, especially coming from her nonprofit meetings where she always wore a suit. Today she was dressed in what my dad would call “hippie” clothes. A flowy white shirt, lavender jeans, and sandals with flower decorations. Maybe her casual attire was supposed to help me to relax.
“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the love seat that I assumed was her equivalent of a therapy couch. She sat in a wing back chair opposite me with an eager expression on her face.
“Thanks so much for fitting me in,” I said, already feeling guilty that I wasn’t really here for a consultation instead of questioning her about a murder.
“Of course,” she said. “I love helping people, especially those I know.”
I looked around. “You did a great job on this room.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Sharon helped me.” She gestured toward the bookshelves behind her. Beige fabric bins had been placed artistically to provide pretty storage. “She organized my other business, and the big garage here too. Now we can get both cars in it.”
“Very nice,” I said. “So how does this work?”
“Today, I’m just going to ask you some questions that will most likely cause you to think about your life in different ways. You don’t need to answer the questions, but I’ll send them home with you as a sort of homework.”
“Great,” I said. “Just like my son.”
She chuckled. “Well, a little different. Should we begin?”
I took a dramatic deep breath and smiled. “Yes.”
“I’m going to read you five questions, and then you decide which of these you’d like to discuss today.” She looked down and then met my eyes. “One. How happy are you today?”
Oh man. I looked away. That was a trick question. I was excited about my work possibilities, but my dad’s illness and Twila’s murder constantly lurked in the mind. And now I had the added worry of Elliott reaching out to his father.
She checked her notes and then met my eyes again, maintaining the same pleasant expression. “Two. What does success look like to you?”
Another hard one. I used to just want to make a living and support Elliott. Now, after Lani said I could go “big time,” maybe I wanted more. But I wasn’t sure exactly what that was.
“Three. What does success outside of work mean to you?”
Wait. Was she reading my mind?
I felt myself flush with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. Pride that I was raising a great kid. But that was about all I was doing outside of work. Although my relationship with my dad was getting better. I had some good friends. But I’d never had a successful romantic relationship. Like ever.
“Four. What negativity are you holding on to that keeps you from achieving success both inside and outside of your work?”
She really was reading my mind.
Fawn put her notebook down and folded her hands on top. “Which of those do you want to talk about?”
Which of those had the least chance of having to reveal anything private to her? “Um, success at work?”
“Excellent.” She smiled. “Let’s begin.”
Chapter 12
Forty minutes later, I was a sweaty, much less coherent mess, and I still hadn’t asked Fawn about Twila. “You really gave me a lot to think about.” I stood up, trying not to look like I was running away. “My head is spinning. Can we stop here?”
“Of course.” She moved to her desk and turned on her computer. “Let’s meet next week so you can move your life forward. What days and times work best for you?”
Being a life coach must be a great excuse to nag. I pulled out my phone and brought up my calendar. “Next week is crazy,” I said. “How about Friday afternoon the following week?”
I’d have to remember to cancel. Then I thought about all the questions she’d asked. Maybe it would be helpful to meet one more time.
“I have one more question for you to spend some serious time considering until we meet again.” She gave me a serious look. “What is your heart’s desire?”
I felt a flutter in my chest. It had been a long time since I’d even come close to thinking about my heart’s desire. I said a noncommittal, “Hmm,” and changed the subject. “I can still use the SPM discount, right?”
“Sure can,” she said cheerfully. “That’s why we have it.”
I quickly wrote a check so I could switch gears to asking about Twila, but then I noticed a binder on her desk with a large gold label that said Merritt Finance Consulting. “Is that Bert Merritt’s company?”
“Yes, why?”
“My dad has some money with him,” I said. “Sharon asked if I wanted to invest when I first met her, but I’m still at the point where I put all of my money into the business.”
“That’s good business sense,” she said. “But I am earning quite a chunk of change with them.”
“Could I take a look at that?” I asked. “Maybe I could squeeze some money out in the next couple of months if it makes sense.”
She put her hand down on the binder. “Oh, I’m sorry. This one is personalized for me. It has my financial info in it. I shouldn’t have left it on the
desk.”
“No problem.” I moved toward the door.
“All you have to do is talk to Bert. I’m sure he’d be happy to create one for you,” she said. “He’s great at explaining all of those financial terms too. Oh, and if you do sign up with him, please let him know I referred you. Then I get a finder’s fee.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh wait,” she said. “I think they’re having one of those dinners where they tell you all about their funds. I’ll look for it and email you an invite.”
Sharon and Bert were both somewhat overzealous in their marketing, and I didn’t want to tell Fawn that I’d tagged their emails as Spam, so I never saw them anymore.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” I paused on the way to the door. “So terrible about Twila.” Not the best segue, but it was all I could come up with.
“Awful,” she said.
“Were you close to her?” I asked. “It’s just, I can’t imagine anyone disliking her enough to...”
She opened her mouth and closed it, and then opened the door.
Was she about to tell me someone who didn’t like Twila? “I’m sorry.” I took a step through and stopped, turning to block her in. “I wasn’t trying to make you break life coach confidentiality or anything.”
“Of course not,” she said. “You wouldn’t want me to blab about your personal business to my other clients.”
Wait. Did that mean one of her clients didn’t like Twila? “It’s just that I haven’t met anyone who had a problem with Twila,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Really? Someone did?” I asked. “I can’t imagine.”
She stayed quiet. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe I should ask a more pointed question.
“Do you have a confidentiality problem with being her website administrator?” That came out more exasperated than I planned.
She laughed. “No.”
“Because you had mentioned at the SPM meeting that the website was getting a lot of hits, so I wondered if there was anything, I don’t know, suspicious on Twila’s site.”
She shook her head. “Nothing suspicious. She had this one guy who was a bit obsessed with her puzzles. He complained anytime he could find more than one answer.”
“Oh,” I said. “Did you tell the police about him?”
She frowned. “No. Do you think I should?”
“They asked me to tell them anything and everything,” I said. “Do you know the guy’s name?”
“Oh yeah. Tod Walker.” Her tone of voice made him seem like a big problem.
“That bad, huh?” I said sympathetically. “Maybe he needs your life coach help.”
“He needs some kind of help, that’s for sure. He took puzzles way too seriously,” she said. “Why are you asking about him?”
“I can’t help but be curious about all of this.” Time to distract her. “Could I check out your garage? My dad could use some help in his.”
“Sure, a quick look,” she said. “I have another appointment coming soon, but I love to show it off.”
We went through her house and peeked in. Sharon had created overhead storage with metal racks and neatly labeled clear plastic boxes. She’d also lined one wall with shelves similar to those in Fawn’s office, this time filled with various brightly colored fabric boxes that had lids.
“It’s so organized,” I said. “Is it hard to keep it that way?”
“Well, Sharon provided some training that I use to help me keep up with it,” she said. “I juggle a lot of jobs, and every bit helps.”
Then I remembered the other question I was asking the SPM members and pulled out the Lice Club Lady card. “Hey, I’ve asked some of the other moms about these cards I saw at the trade show. Do you know who this is?”
“I think I know why you’re asking all these questions,” she said. “You’re really just trying to make sense of Twila’s death. And perhaps death in general. We should focus on that in our next session.”
* * * *
I sent an email to Lani about Tod Walker and Sharon’s unlikely suggestion of people on the housing waiting list, and then I realized I was very close to Mona’s house. Maybe I could pop in and ask her about her products, and hint that I’d be having a hot date sometime soon. I thought about Joss sitting on my dad’s couch, his T-shirt tightening across his chest. And Joss walking across the farm in his gray tank top. And Joss—
I gave myself a time out, taking a deep breath to get the lust out of my system. It didn’t work. Pulling in front of Mona’s house, I mentally debated if this impulse was a good idea, and then forced myself to get out of the car. She probably wouldn’t even be home.
I knocked on her front door, nervous as hell, and heard her say in a low sexy voice, “Just a minute.”
Her house was almost a clone of Fawn’s, although Mona had bucked tradition and painted her house the lightest shade of pink. The rest of the street was solidly off white. Was that incense I smelled from inside? Who the heck used incense these days?
Mona opened the door with a dramatic flourish and squealed when she saw that it was me. She slammed the door in my face. “What are you doing here?” she squawked, pretty much the opposite of a sultry voice.
It was easy to see why she was upset. She’d been wearing a red silk teddy with black lace and a matching thigh length robe. She was definitely not expecting me.
“I’m so sorry!” I said. “I’ll come back another time, I mean, I’ll call first or something.”
“Go. Away. Now.”
“I’m gone!” I said, trying not to laugh as the humor of the situation came over me. I walked to my car, wondering who she’d been expecting. Then I moved a little slower. Maybe I should hang around and find out. Wouldn’t a real investigator do just that?
In case she was watching me, I got in my car, pulled out, and drove around the block. I parked a few doors away, and waited. It didn’t take long for her real guest to arrive. A BMW rocketed into her driveway, and a man in a very nice suit got out. I didn’t recognize him.
I pulled my phone out, zoomed in, and took a few photos, hoping I was able to catch enough of his face to ask Lani if she recognized him. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see if she let him in, but he didn’t return to his car for the whole ten minutes I forced myself to wait before heading home.
I drove by her house slowly. The door was closed. Unless he was some kind of magician, she’d let him in.
But who was he? And why was she wearing lingerie to greet him?
* * * *
I had two hours to spend on the proposal before I needed to leave to get Elliott from camp. Since I didn’t know how the pick-up process worked, and I wanted to avoid those elementary school moms who were ruthless about getting a front place in line, I planned to leave early and work in the car while I waited.
Elliott must be having a great time. He hadn’t texted me since the morning, other than a Yes! with a happy face emoji in response to a Going well? text from me.
“I figured out something,” my dad said as soon as I came in. He was sitting at the makeshift desk in the living room, looking more energetic than I’d seen him in a while.
Trouble turned her head from her perch on the back of the couch where she’d been looking out the window. “Meow,” she said. Ignore him and come and see these nasty, good-for-nothing squirrels out there.
“About what?” I said.
“Your bad review,” he said. “Look. The same guy wrote a bunch of bad reviews on almost all the organic pet food companies in California and Nevada.”
“Wow! How’d you figure that out?”
“He really likes using Spanish words for colors as his last name. Grana, Oro, Blanco. But he reuses the same phrases,” he explained. “In ten of these he mentioned ‘chemical smell’ and in a bunch of others he used the phr
ase ‘smelled awful.’”
When I didn’t respond, he said. “If you read all of them, you’d see the pattern too.”
“Oh, I believe you,” I said, getting angry. “What do we do?”
“I asked one of my buddies to look into it,” he said.
“Your buddy?”
“Yeah, he took some class on how to outwit hackers,” he said. “It was more like a how to hack class.”
I had created a monster. “One class and he can hack into SDHelp?”
“He’s not going to hack in,” he said.
“That’s good,” I said. “We don’t need any more trouble with the police.”
“He’s going to ask someone who can.” He seemed really happy with himself.
“Wait, what?”
“Besides, he’s with the police,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m so confused. He’s a police officer and he’s helping you hack?”
“Not an officer,” he said. “He works at the station.”
“Won’t he get in trouble?” Or could we get in trouble?
He shrugged. “I don’t think so. The way he tells it, they can’t get by without him.”
“I don’t want him to lose his job over this,” I said.
He waved his hand. “Nah. It’s all good.”
Trouble meowed again. It sounded like a warning to me.
* * * *
“We already learned the first three songs!” Elliott said as soon as he got in the car. A bunch of kids waved good-bye to him, which warmed my heart.
“Nice!” I pulled out slowly, watching out for wayward theater kids.
He went on excitedly talking about the dance moves, blocking, and how he knew more lines than anyone else.
“Do you like the director?” I asked.
“He worked with all the little kids today,” Elliott said. “All of us principals worked with the assistant director, Larry.”