by Nicole Ellis
My eyes widened. “Mikey will be terrified.”
“Nah, he’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.” Our son still slept with a night-light on in his room, so I was pretty sure zombies would give him nightmares. At least Adam was home now and I could give him the unenviable job of calming Mikey down when he had a nightmare. “How are you going to pull all of that off on such short notice?”
“Hmmm.” He stroked his chin as he looked around, echoing the gesture his mother had made earlier that morning in the same spot. “I bet Dad’s buddies down at the model train museum would be willing to help out. Some of them are great carpenters and it is for charity.”
“And the materials?” I looked dubiously at what we already had. The budget for the haunted house wasn’t massive and I’d counted on Angela’s expertise to create everything.
He snapped his fingers. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it all out, ok?”
I shrugged. “Ok. With Angela gone, I’ve got enough to worry about with the logistics of the event. If you can handle the decorations, I’d be grateful.”
“Don’t worry about it, honey.” He squealed like a little girl seeing a unicorn. “This is going to be so much fun!”
I shook my head. I’d never seen my husband so excited about anything, much less something creative like this.
I stopped by Beth’s office on the way back to my own. She was writing something on a yellow notepad.
“I called Adam.”
“I thought I heard his voice.” She pushed the notepad away from her. “What did he think?”
“He thinks it will be tons of fun to put it together.”
She laughed. “He never wanted to be involved with the business because he deemed it boring. It’s ironic that now he’s excited to be a part of it.”
“Yeah. I just hope he can get it all done in time. If you see Lincoln, give him a heads up that Adam wants to enlist the help of the volunteers down at the train museum and historical society to help with the event.”
She laughed. “Will do.” She peered more closely at me. “How is everything else going? Did the event ad get placed in the newspaper? Have the signs been printed?”
“Yes. I checked those off my list last week.”
“I’m sorry you had to take on all of the extra work for this event. Who would have expected Angela to get arrested for murder? The woman is obnoxious, but I didn’t think she had it in her to kill someone. Actually, when you told me about finding a body at her house, I was surprised that it wasn’t hers.”
“Me too.” I remembered thinking the same thing when the sarcophagus had opened. “But the show must go on.” I sighed. “If we don’t have the best haunted house this town’s ever seen, we’ll never live it down. Angela made a big deal to the Chamber of Commerce about it being here this year.”
“I know. And it would be bad for business if it fails.” She scrunched up her face. “Although, I was going over our bookings for November and December and we’re filling up quickly. We’re going to have a busy holiday season with all of those company parties.”
Ugh. One more seasonal stressor to worry about. At least this year, I wouldn’t be obligated to attend Adam’s company party.
“Will we have more staff to help?” At the end of the summer, many of the seasonal staff had left for other jobs or to return to college.
“Yes. A couple of our waiters and event staff will be home from college for Christmas, so we’ll have some assistance with things.” She eyed me. “It’s going to be busy though, Jill. I’ll probably assign a few of the company parties to you to manage. Are you up for it?”
I smiled brightly at her. “Of course.” I laughed. “At the moment, I just need to make it through Halloween.”
“Let me know if you need help, ok?”
“I will. I think with Adam on the job, I have everything under control at the moment.”
She gave me a thumbs-up and I exited her office, returning to my desk to check off a few more things from my to-do list. As much as I hoped Angela would be back soon, I needed to prepare for the possibility that she wouldn’t. There had been a MUMs event that day that I hadn’t been able to attend, but Desi had planned to be there. I hoped she’d been able to do some subtle snooping among the other moms. I finished a few more things and headed over to the café for an afternoon pick-me-up.
12
When I arrived at the café I didn’t see Desi. The afternoon crowds had dissipated, but there was a group of moms in the back of the café, chatting as their children played with the assortment of toys. A few students were holed up with their computers, sitting on stools at the bar positioned against a side wall.
I ordered my coffee and scone and asked her assistant, Andrea, “Do you know when Desi will be back?”
She checked the clock on the wall. “She should be back soon. She said she planned to the leave the mall in Everton around two thirty so she’d be back by three.”
The mall? Why was Desi at a mall? She wasn’t normally much of a shopping person.
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Desi said as she breezed in the door. “I had to drop Lina off with Tomàs after the MUMs meeting.”
Both Andrea and I stared at her. Her face was covered in makeup better suited for a night out on the town than an afternoon shift at a small-town café.
“Uh, Desi?” Andrea asked. “What happened to your face?”
“What?” Desi touched her cheeks. “Oh, yeah. I’d better go scrub this off.”
I followed her to the back of the room where the small one-person bathroom was located.
“What were you and Lina doing?”
“The MUMs and I were at a mom and baby fashion show event at the mall. All the moms got makeovers at the makeup counter and we and our babies were given matching outfits to wear.”
I raised an eyebrow. “A fashion show?” Now I was glad that I’d skipped out on it. What was cute on Ella would not be cute on me. It had been a long time since I could get away with wearing bows on my clothes.
She shrugged. “It was surprisingly fun. I’ve got pictures I can show you later. Anyway, I need to wash this off. Stick around though—I wanted to talk with you about something.”
She shut the door on me and I retrieved my coffee and pastry from where I’d left them on the front counter. I settled myself at a table for two overlooking Lighthouse Park. With the cold weather, not many people were out on the lawn, but there were still a few die-hard joggers and dog walkers. The area surrounding the lighthouse was empty; the local historical society offered tours of it on the weekends, but the entrance was gated off during the week.
Desi sat down at my table, her face freshly washed. “Better?”
I smiled. “It didn’t look that bad—it just didn’t look like you.”
“Yeah, they went a little overboard. I had to keep the woman at the cosmetics counter from putting blush on Lina’s cheeks after she was doing with my makeover.”
“Whoa. Did the other moms have their babies made up?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. Don’t be silly. I know we thought some of the other moms were silly, but most of them are really nice. I even made a coffee date with a couple of them for next week. I’m sure you can come with us if you’d like.”
I took a deep breath. She was right. I had gone into joining the group with some preconceptions.
“That’s great. When this haunted house mess is over with, I’d love to go to the next meeting.” I crossed my fingers in the air. “I promise I’ll keep a more open mind.”
She grinned. “You weren’t completely wrong. Some of them are rather vapid, but they’re still nice.”
“In all of your friendly chats today, did you find out anything about Angela or Mindy? Were they really friends like Drew said, or did Angela just order her around like she did to everyone else?” I sipped from my coffee, enjoying the freshly roasted beans that Desi bought from a local coffee roaster.
She shook her head. “No, t
hey didn’t know too much. I asked around, but most of them had never met Mindy and they weren’t big fans of Angela. Apparently she wields an iron fist with the MUMs leaders too—it’s not just her haunted house management style. Actually, I found out that Angela’s the reason the last treasurer left.” She sighed. “If I’d only known when I volunteered for the job.”
“I’m not surprised. I have the feeling not many people like her.”
“Her husband seems to be devoted to her, so she must have some good qualities.” Desi broke a piece off of my scone and popped it into her mouth.
I pretended not to see her take my treat. “He seems sure that we’ll be able to help figure out what really happened to Mindy. I mean, we’ve accidentally solved a couple of murders, but we’re not the police.”
“I know.” She washed the bite of scone down with some coffee. “But you’re getting quite a reputation around here.”
“Do you think he really expects you and me to clear Angela’s name?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. He does have a point. Since we’re involved with the MUMs organization, we do have contact with many of the people that Mindy had in common with Angela. We found her body at Angela’s house, so it’s probably someone they both knew.”
“I guess.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about getting actively involved in another murder case.
She reached for another piece and I swatted her hand away.
“Mine,” I said.
“Hey, I made that.” She mock glared at me.
“Then go get your own.” I returned the feigned glare. “It was bad enough that all day I had to smell the chocolate chip cookies you made this morning when you didn’t have the common courtesy to leave a few in the kitchen for me.”
“Those were for the Harvest Festival. I only had time to make four dozen, so there weren’t any extras. If you’d prefer not to bring the full four dozen as your contribution, I can grab one for you to eat now.” She raised an eyebrow at me.
I sighed. “No. Thank you for making them. I really do appreciate it. With my luck, Nancy will count them and I don’t want to find out what she’ll do if she comes up short. I’ll have to make do with this scone.”
She laughed and retrieved a scone and a cup of coffee for herself.
“I’m starving after that event,” she said as she bit into the blueberry scone.
“Was there no lunch offered?”
“They had some sort of tea biscuit and coffee from the espresso stand outside of the store, but the biscuit looked so dry that I couldn’t bring myself to try it. I kept imagining all of the goodies in my own bakery case.”
“Maybe you should sell your baked goods to them. It sounds like they could use a better supplier.”
“Maybe in a year or two.” She bit into the scone and chased it with a sip of creamy coffee. “I’ve got enough to deal with right now. This treasurer thing is harder and more time-consuming than I would have thought.”
I laughed. “These volunteer jobs tend to do that. Remember how you warned me away from being the preschool auction chair last year and I didn’t listen? You should have taken your own advice.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it now,” she said grumpily. “The other problem is that Mindy never gave me the group’s books before she died, so I can’t even do my job.”
“They’re not at the MUMs office?”
“Nope. That’s the first place I looked after Lisa told me she’d returned them to Mindy.”
“What are you going to do?”
She gave me a puppy dog look. “I was hoping you’d come with me to Mindy’s apartment and see if she brought them home. One of the other volunteers gave me Mindy’s daughter’s phone number. I called her and she said I could stop by tomorrow and take a look. Please? I went to Angela’s house with you.”
I sighed. “Fine. But I hope you have better luck than I had.” If only I’d been able to find the design plans.
“I talked to Mom when I was driving home. She said Adam was helping with the haunted house. Is that true?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” I felt a little bad saying that as I was grateful for my husband’s help, but there was still a niggling worry at the back of my mind that working together wasn’t the best of ideas.
Desi laughed. “Don’t worry. I know my brother. He’ll be so obsessed with the design for the haunted house that he won’t have time to get in your hair.”
“I hope so.” I finished up my scone and coffee and stood. “Give me a call tonight and we can work out a plan for going to Mindy’s house tomorrow.”
“Will do. See you later.”
I crossed the lawn back over to the Boathouse and ducked my head into the main event space. Adam was pacing the floor muttering something to himself. Well, at least he was engrossed in something. After having him traveling out of state so much for our whole marriage, it was odd having him at home and I was going a little crazy. Moving everything in the cupboards and the loss of TV time to watch my favorite shows were just the tip of the iceberg. Our whole family routine had changed and figuring it out was slow-going. A twinge hit me. Was this how my parents had felt?
Last summer, my parents had announced their separation after almost forty years of marriage. They’d both retired from their teaching jobs and after being home together for a month had decided that they’d be better off apart so they could explore their own interests.
Dad still lived at home, in the basement apartment, and I didn’t think either of them was dating anyone. Ugh. That was a horrible thought. It was bad enough for them to split up after all this time, but to date other people? I still held out hope that they’d get back together à la The Parent Trap.
All in all, maybe it was good that Adam had this project to work on. And maybe, just maybe, working together wouldn’t be so bad.
13
The next day, Desi and I drove to north Everton to see if the financial records for the MUMs group were at Mindy’s apartment.
“This is where Mindy lives?” I peered up at the second floor unit in the middle of a large apartment complex.
Desi checked the note she’d typed out on her phone. “D-245. Yep, this is right.”
Somebody was moving all of Mindy’s things out of her apartment. The door to the unit was open, but not in a scary, someone’s-broken-in kind of way. There were boxes piled up along both sides of the hallway and I could hear someone clomping around inside. We looked at each other. If this was Mindy’s place, we’d arrived just in time.
“It seems a little soon to be taking her stuff out. I mean, her funeral was only five days ago,” I whispered. “Do you think Stacey’s having to do it all by herself?”
“I don’t know. It does seem soon, but I guess they need everything out before the end of the month or they get stuck with another month’s rent.”
A man came around the corner, carrying a small box. It must have been full of books or something, because he lowered it carefully to the top of a stack and then stretched his arms out to the side and flexed his fingers.
“Hi.” He cocked his head to the side. “Can I help you with something?”
Desi took the lead. “I’m from the local MUMs group and Stacey Stevens mentioned she’d be here to let me in so I could take a look for a ledger that Mindy had.” She looked past him. “Is she here?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know about any ledger and Stacey isn’t here. Which,” he scoffed, “is not a surprise. I’m Joseph Danvers.” He jutted his chin in the direction he’d come from. “You’re welcome to come back to the office and see what you can find. I haven’t packed up everything in that room yet. But if it’s already been packed up, you’re going to have to wait until it gets to the storage unit. Stacey has a key to it. I’ve wasted enough time on all of Mindy’s junk as is.”
Desi and I exchanged surprised looks. Whoever he was, this guy was a real piece of work. The woman had just died and he was complaining about how much stuff she had.
We duti
fully followed him back to a room that Mindy had set up as a home office. Her desk appeared untouched and I gave Desi a covert thumbs-up. She grinned back at me. The man left, and with him the tension that had followed him into the room.
“Who was that guy? I remember him from the funeral.” I knelt down on the plush beige carpeting next to the desk’s bottom drawers, thinking about Mindy’s funeral. He’d been the man at the front who didn’t look too broken up about Mindy’s death—the one who Stacey had glared at. So what was he doing moving Mindy’s things out of the apartment?
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. His last name is Danvers, so maybe he’s her brother?” Desi pointed at the desk. “Let’s get going on this before he decides it’s time to pack all of this up too.”
We rummaged through the drawers, but even though there were many color-coded files bearing the names of local utilities and banks, we couldn’t find any information about the MUMs accounts.
Desi sat back on her heels and shoved some stray strands of hair back from her forehead. “Nothing. The ledger wasn’t at the office and it’s not here. Where is it?”
I looked around at the boxes. “Maybe it’s already been packed?”
“Could be. But how are we supposed to find it then?”
“I don’t know.”
“I really wish I hadn’t volunteered to be treasurer.” Desi pouted.
We pushed the drawers in and walked toward the door to the room. Suddenly, Desi stopped in the doorway.
“Hey,” I said as I ran into her.
She held a finger up to her mouth. “Shh.”
I stopped what I was doing and listened. The man was on the phone with someone and he didn’t sound happy. With every word he spoke, his voice increased in volume.
“What do you mean the insurance payout will be delayed? I’m her husband and I’m her beneficiary.” He listened intently as the other person spoke. “This is unacceptable. I want to talk with your manager.”