The handwritten pot note was a little harder to explain. Was it genuine? Could it possibly be?
“Chief?”
He turned and looked at Mia.
“You were about to tell me how Cook went free,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Someone came forward with a time-stamp video of a party Cook was at during the time of the murder.”
“They were able to pinpoint time of death that narrowly?”
“Narrowly enough for Cook.”
“And you guys have nobody else that looks good? What about Barry Cargill? Are you looking at him next? Oh! And I’ve been meaning to ask you about Derek Kilpatrick’s alibi.”
“I’m not talking about the case with you, Mia.”
“Why not? I don’t work for Bentley & Jamison anymore.”
“You know the case is reopened, right?”
“Of course.”
“That means you need to surrender all your files and you don’t go near anybody you’ve been questioning up to now.” He glanced at her to see if she could tell he was bluffing. If she wanted to be difficult, he’d have to get a warrant for the files.
And Mia was always difficult.
“Did you hear me, Mia?”
She walked over to the hose and stretched out a kink in it. “Maybe some things I found out could be helpful to the police.”
“Type them up and include them with the files you have.”
“Sounds like a brush off, Chief.”
“Is that your mother calling us?” He turned to head back to the house and Mia grabbed his arm.
“Chief, I’d really like to be kept in the loop on this. Please.”
Maxwell tucked Mia’s hand on his arm as if he were the father of the bride escorting her down the aisle and patted her hand. He couldn’t help but see the similarities between Mia and Mindy. Both were hardheaded and passionate. Both saw only their side of the equation. He’d failed Mindy, that was clear. In a thousand different ways. He knew that was a mess and he knew it was his fault.
“That’s not going to be possible, darlin’,” he said brightly. “But what is possible is the clear and irrefutable evidence of maple bacon and waffles I smell coming from the house. Shall we?”
The last thing Maxwell wanted to do was ask Jess about the stupid note—especially after he’d told her to ignore Mindy’s troublemaking. His mood sank lower with every footstep he took toward the house and the woman he loved more than anything else in the world.
*****
Mia looked at Jack as she drove them back to Atlantic Station from her mother’s house. He still looked weak. He’d spoken very little at Jess’s. Not himself at all.
Almost as if he thought he might not be available for Mom’s big day.
“What did the chief say to you when you were outside?” he asked.
“Basically told me to butt out.”
“Well, that’s not a surprise.”
“I know things, Jack,” Mia said hotly. “I can be a help. Maxwell is always talking about how the department doesn’t have enough money or resources and here I am—a walking, talking resource ready to be used in any way necessary.”
“Please don’t lead with your chin like that until I’m feeling better,” he said, a faint smile on his lips.
“You look awful.”
“Thanks. I feel pretty crappy.”
“Don’t you think you should have your lawyer push the prelim back? You’re sick, Jack.”
She hadn’t meant to be the first one to bring it up, but there were limits to her powers of self-control.
“How I feel is irrelevant for what’s going down on Tuesday,” he said softly.
“What?” She snapped her head to look at him. “Do you know something?”
“Not really. Just…” He lifted a hand as if to explain something to her and then dropped it. “Not really.”
“You need to be in bed.”
“Again with the sex talk when I’m in no condition to do anything about it.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window.
An hour later, Jack was tucked in bed and asleep. Mia sat on the couch in the living room and tried to process everything that had happened.
Cook was free—not even on the hook for trying to buy underage sex since the twins were not, after all, underage. It was all so frustrating. When she tried to log onto Victoria’s Atlanta Love’s site, the password didn’t work anymore. To hear Maxwell complain about the Atlanta Police IT Department, she would’ve expected them to take a lot longer before closing down that portal.
Figures this would be the one time they rise to the occasion.
And where does that leave everything else? Derek? Cargill? If Cook really is innocent then the killer was out there walking around free. Mia ran her fingers through Daisy’s topknot and tried to think of what she could do if the police really did close all avenues on the case. She glanced around the room and noticed Jack’s smartphone on the coffee table.
He must be sick. He normally isn’t five inches from that thing.
She had it in her hand and open before she even knew she was doing it. It wasn’t password protected. Trying to ignore a creeping sense of guilt, she went straight to his email addresses, found his lawyer’s name and opened the most recent one. She drilled down into the history and read every exchange between them since the arrest, then closed it and set it back on the coffee table.
Jack was going to plead not guilty in three days’ time. And then he was going to be taken into custody to await trial. Mia looked in the direction of the bedroom and felt a terrible weight press on her shoulders. He was going down this terrible road alone.
The man was stubborn and he was strong.
Even Mia knew that was a deadly combination.
The next morning, Jack was much improved. Mia could see he would be healthy enough to take the stand in his own defense. She could also see that if somebody didn’t get off her butt and do something, soon, he would be well enough to be led out of the courtroom in leg manacles too.
She showered and dressed, walked the dog and came into the living room, where Jack rested on the couch.
“You look better,” she said.
“Liar.”
“I have to go do that bridesmaid thing.”
“I’ll be fine, Mia. Go.”
“I won’t be long.”
“I’ll probably be asleep the whole time you’re gone. Don’t hurry.”
Truth was, she hated to leave him—especially since she couldn’t get past the feeling that these might be the last few days she had with him where they weren’t separated by bars. But she couldn’t let him know that. He was obviously determined to do this without her involvement.
The drive to the wedding dress boutique was a short one, but filled with thoughts of Cook and then of Jack in a confusing Ping-Pong match of images and thoughts.
Jess had insisted Mia meet Mindy at the shop since they were the only two bridesmaids and needed to coordinate their outfits. Mia was fairly sure all she really needed to coordinate was buying the same dress that Mindy did, but clearly Jess was hoping to foster a detente between the soon-to-be stepsisters.
She arrived early at the bridal shop and handed the paper with the catalog number and her size written on it to the sales girl. She’d seen a photo of the dress at her mother’s house and it didn’t look too bad. Mia rarely wore dresses so she didn’t expect to get much use out of it beyond the wedding day, but it didn’t matter. She’d wear a duck costume if that’s what her mother needed from her.
“The Princess scoop neck in cocoa chiffon,” the sales girl said as she came back to Mia, the dress draped in light transparent layers over one arm. “Follow me to the dressing room, please.”
Mia fell into step, took the dress and deposited on the floor of the room her jeans, ankle motorcycle boots and sweatshirt that she meant to launder after her last trip to the barn. She was long-waisted, with long legs—a surprising combination on a petite fr
ame—and one that almost always made her feel like a miniature Barbie doll. When the dress smoothed over her hips in its froth of chiffon, even Mia had to admit she looked ready for a fairy tale.
“How does it fit?” the sales girl called to her from outside the room.
Mia stepped out and in front of the three-way mirror. “Good, I think,” she said.
“It’s perfect with your skin color,” the girl said, frowning as if to belie her words. “You have a lot of olive in your skin. Very nice. Makes you glow.”
Mia pinked up at the compliment and turned to look at herself from the back. Would Jack get a chance to see her in this dress? Her shoulders sagged at the thought. How can she be trying on dresses and feeling pretty when he was back home wondering if he was going to prison?
“Yes, it’s nice,” Mia said. “I’ll take it.” She went back to the dressing room and carefully transferred the dress back to its hanger. When she came out, the girl took the dress away and Mia followed her to the cash register.
Mindy still hadn’t shown up and a clawing finger of doubt pinched at Mia. Would she not come? Would she refuse to wear a bridesmaid’s dress at Jess’s wedding? As she approached the cash register, Mia saw a woman in line ahead of her. The sales girl gave Mia an apologetic look but Mia didn’t mind waiting.
The woman in front of Mia was on her cell phone and drumming long, lacquered nails against the counter as she spoke. It was interesting to Mia that someone could be so clueless that they were holding everyone else up—unless they knew they were and just didn’t care? Mia leaned against the counter to wait.
“Yes, well, I heard he just croaked and nobody even knew he had a heart condition. What heart condition? That’s what I said.”
The woman spoke loudly in a brash New Jersey accent. The sales woman who was waiting on her had stopped ringing up her purchase and held out the woman’s credit card as if she had a question about it.
Oh, this should be good. Mia smiled. Better than Saturday morning TV.
“I told you that already,” the woman brayed on the phone. “Supposedly he had some kind of pills and as long as he took them, no problem. What? What is it?” The woman shifted her phone to another ear but was now clearly talking to the saleswoman.
“It was declined, I’m afraid,” the woman said.
“Impossible. Try it again.”
“I’ve already run it through twice.”
“Well, run it through three times. That card is good. Eleanor, I’m going to have to call you back. This moron at the bridal shop doesn’t know how to run a credit card machine.”
Mia watched the saleswoman’s impassive face. Clearly, in her business, she’d been called worse.
A few minutes later, as Mia left the shop with her own dress, bagged and draped over her arm, she scanned the parking lot for the chief’s daughter but was secretly grateful not to see her. As she hung up the dress in the back of her car, a thought came to her.
At first it was unformed and negligible, really nothing more than a feeling. But as she secured her seatbelt, Mia caught sight of the New Jersey woman in the parking lot getting into her car—and the thought burst into her brain fully formed.
Was it possible? Was it at all probable? Maybe if you believed just for a moment that Jack’s guy really did just—what was it the woman said?—croak? Then maybe, just maybe…
Mia pulled her tablet from the glove compartment and opened an Internet browser, typing can you drop dead of heart condition? in the search window. Within minutes, she was toggling between three websites that listed several heart ailments that, left untreated, could result in an abrupt death.
A long shot. A Hail Mary play. A one-in-a-million chance.
With trembling fingers, Mia opened her smartphone and scrolled through her photographs until she came to the one she’d taken of the file folder Jack had left out when he didn’t think she was paying attention. It was the file on the man who died that night at the fire extinguisher plant. He was forty-two years old. Mia felt her pulse quicken.
She isolated his address and plugged it into her GPS system.
It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. And in Mia’s brief experience, a wild leap of faith, a little guts and a whole lot of nothing had solved some pretty big-ass cases.
Chapter 10
“Let me do the talking, okay?” Mindy flicked a hair off her mother’s shoulder as they stood on Jess Kazmaroff’s doorstep.
“Of course, dear. Have you met her? Is she pretty?” Cindy Maxwell stood next to her daughter, staring at the door as if addressing it. There was a light scent of alcohol about her. Not surprising. This wasn’t an easy errand and Mindy was mildly impressed that her mother was able to come at all. If necessary, Mindy could have done it alone. Just not as convincingly.
When the door opened, she enjoyed the startled reaction their visit caused in Jess.
“Well, hello,” Jess said, looking from Mindy to her mother. “What a surprise. I thought you were…” She looked at Mindy and smiled tremulously. “Weren’t you and Mia meeting at the bridal shop today?”
“Oh, crap, was that today? I totally forgot,” Mindy said. “Can we talk to you?”
“Yes, of course,” Jess said, backing up and holding the door open for them. Mindy had to give her mother a nudge to get her moving across the threshold.
“We have a little problem and when my mother and I got to talking about it…oh, have you two met?”
She had to hand it to Jess, her smile looked as genuine and open as if she really meant it. She shook Mindy’s mother’s hand.
“We haven’t,” Jess said. “But I’m so glad to finally meet you.”
Wisely, Jess made no mention of how much the chief had or hadn’t said about his ex-wife. Probably better that way. Jess was fast on her feet. Mindy had to give her that.
“You, too,” Cindy Maxwell murmured. Mindy had practically dressed her mother that morning and it had been no easy task. After the divorce, Cindy had taken to wearing yoga pants and sweatshirts and her diet had altered in order to more comfortably fill them. Now she was overweight—which was unusual for an alcoholic, but that was her mother, always defying the odds and coming out on the less positive side of the statistics.
“I know this is probably indelicate,” Mindy said, looking around the living room and trying to imagine her dad lounging on the couch or fiddling with the TV, “but we need to ask you something about the wedding. And we’d just as soon my dad not know.”
“I see,” Jess said. “Can I get you a coffee? I just made a pot.”
“That would be awesome, Jess,” Mindy said. “Wouldn’t it, Mom?”
Cindy nodded her head and Mindy gave her another small push, this time in the direction of the kitchen where Jess was walking. Over her shoulder, Mindy saw what she was looking for in a darkened corner of the living room.
The three walked into the kitchen and Mindy promptly sat at the round dining table hoping her mother would take her lead. She did. They watched Jess as she pulled two mugs out of the cabinet over the sink, poured the coffees and returned to the table.
“How do you take your coffee?”
Before her mother could speak, Mindy said, “Oh, with everything you’ve got. Cream, sugar, the works.” She pressed a foot down firmly on her mother’s toe and was rewarded with a startled look on Cindy’s face. Jess turned to fetch the cream and sugar, as well as spoons, napkins, and a pound cake she had on the counter.
“You said it was indelicate?” Jess said.
“Somewhat,” Mindy said. “Although I’m sure we can work it out. Mom, can you start? I need to run to the bathroom.”
“Across the living room, first door on the left,” Jess said, as she brought the cake and a large cutting knife to the table. Mindy saw her turn quizzically to Cindy. “You have my curiosity,” she said, still smiling.
Mindy moved into the living room and walked past the couch to the other side of the room before turning and silently retracing her steps
. She could hear her mother’s high-pitched voice begin to recite the script Mindy had gone over with her on the way to Jess’s house.
Cindy spoke slowly, as if unsure of what she was saying—as well she might be—but without taking a breath or adding any natural inflections. Normally, her mother’s speech pattern got solidly on Mindy’s last nerve but today she thanked God for it. The more agitated Cindy got—as surely today’s topic would generate without any problem—the more incoherent she would become. Exactly as planned.
Jess’s computer, like a lot of people’s, was set up in the living room. It was a PC that appeared to be several years old. In the course of idle chit-chat with her dad—only it’s never really idle, is it?—Mindy discovered that Jess was nervous about using the Internet. Her daughter, Mia, had set up the computer for her, but if the thin layer of dust on the keyboard was any indication it was rarely used.
Which suited Mindy perfectly.
She booted the machine up and quickly typed in one of five possible passwords in the search space. She hit gold with the third one—Daisy. To hear her father rabbit on about that stupid dog, you’d think it was already listed in his will. She jammed a thumb drive into the back of the computer and when it materialized dragged a remote access app to Jess’s desktop. Double clicking it, she enabled it from her cell phone. She tucked the app in a folder and hid it in the Application folder on Jess’s hard drive.
“Well, I know how important it would be to Mindy, is all,” her mother said loudly, as if in response to something Jess must have said. Mindy stood up and grinned.
It could not have been easier.
*****
Jim Martin’s neighborhood was a new subdivision tucked into an older part of Druid Hills that had been razed and rebuilt. Unfortunately, the street itself hadn’t been updated and Mia drove around potholes and cracks from thirty years of hard use as she looked for the address. Each of the stucco houses looked enough alike to be virtually indistinguishable from each other, styled in vaguely Mediterranean influence with rounded garage doors and archways.
Complete Mia Kazmaroff Romantic Suspense Series, 1-4 Page 70