Priced to Kill

by Margaret Evans

  “Oh, no,” Harry said, shaking his head and sobering more if such a thing were possible. “Something going on there. She went to the doctor’s this morning, and Beth stopped her to say hello. She wasn’t well. Pale. Dark rings under her eyes. Beth offered to drive her, but you know Laura. Independent little cuss. She’s home now, probably resting. Beth’s going over later to see how she’s doing, take her some soup. Don’t you worry, we’ll watch over her. You just go figure out who’s moving to Mapleton and have your staff meeting. You can do this; I know you can. And just remember that nothing lasts forever. It will have an end.”

  But it didn’t make Connor feel much better on his way back to the station, especially now that he heard Laura was sick. He always thought she worked too hard. Had it finally caught up with her? He’d try to fit in a visit to see if there was anything she needed. His drive back to the station was with a stressed mind and a heavy heart.

  seventeen

  The Kovacs triplets were holding an informal town meeting minus the town, something they did rarely and only in what they considered grave situations. They were in Harry’s man-cave, one hundred percent sober, beer locked up tight in the fridge.

  “What’s Mallory up to?” Charlie asked.

  Harry shrugged.

  “Up to us to find out. May not even be him behind this.”

  “I never trusted the man,” Charlie continued. “Too slick, always involved in politics but rarely anything to the town’s benefit. Gotta be something connected with him behind this. I’ll dig it out.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Will began, “you can’t know what Mallory is up against. You know how these things work. He’s always been fair, as far as I can see.”

  Charlie remained adamant.

  “I smell a rat.”

  “With no proof of anything,” Harry pointed out. “Arthur Mallory has done a number of good things for this town, you have to remember. You did articles on his accomplishments when he got his promotion to police chief, remember?”

  “I have a source—”

  “Here we go,” Will cut in, rolling his eyes.

  “My source says there has been no budget cut.”

  Harry was not surprised. “You know the cops are always the ones who feel any changes the most.”

  “I thought that was the teachers and the fire fighters,” Will interjected.

  Charlie was growing angry.

  “It’s all of us in the town that suffer from these particular cuts. And I ask you why this town and no others?”

  “It’s true that Raging Ford has taken a lot of the hits,” Harry pointed out, “so I think we have a responsibility to look further into this. We are now below the minimum number of officers required to provide sufficient protective services for a town of this size. We will have shifts that will be single with no backup except to call other towns and County or State, and Connor is going to clock out and cover anyone out sick or taking vacation. He also has an officer who will be going out on maternity leave in a few months. He hasn’t figured out how to deal with that yet.”

  “If the union finds out what he’s doing…” Charlie began but left unfinished.

  “Yeah,” Will agreed. “That won’t go over well with the state government.” He brightened. “But maybe that’s what needs to happen to get their attention.”

  “I hope not,” Harry said. “That would not bode well for Connor’s career in law enforcement, especially if Internal Affairs gets wind of it. Maybe there’s a way to make sure the union doesn’t find out.”

  “How on earth would you do that? Look, Harry,” Charlie said. “We are all business men, and we know the basic principles. We are in business to stay in business, so difficult decisions have to be made sometimes. This goes well beyond that. Trust me when I say I smell a rat. Let me do some more sniffing around. I know a guy.”

  “And I’ll check with my guy in the state.”

  “Me, too,” added Will. “I know a guy in the county. Let’s meet back here in a week or so and see what we were able to find out. You, Harry, can do what you do best,” he looked pointedly at his brother.

  “Cut hair?”

  “Yeah, surely that’s what I meant. Go check your Rules, Harry.”

  After his brothers had left, Harry knew exactly which of his Rules he needed to think about. They didn’t all apply to Laura Keene’s return to town after her eleven-year absence, even though some thought they did. Some of them were actually part of his solid set of ethics for moral responsibility in leading the town and keeping things in order.

  The one in particular he needed to act on was the one in which a town or civic leader made a decision that hurt some portion or all of the town in some way, and if that individual couldn’t explain the decision to everyone’s satisfaction—as appeared to be the case with Police Chief Arthur Mallory.

  He wasn’t completely sure that Mallory wasn’t in some way involved in the decision, especially since Mallory’s wife rubbed elbows with the state’s elite, and his explanation was far too simplistic to be “satisfactory.” Therefore, Harry needed to check into it. So he needed to think about how he should do that checking.

  Part of him hoped he would find something that would explain the cut logically; part of him hoped he would find nothing. He hoped his brothers would find out something, as well, because he had absolutely no idea on what level the decision had occurred. And the level on which it had been made would determine who was responsible, although they may never find out why.

  Connor had his police SUV at Bob’s Tire and Oil getting the oil changed and the tire pressure checked. He’d gas up when they were done. While he waited, he texted Laura and asked how she was and if there was anything he could do for her. He wasn’t concerned when he didn’t get an immediate response; she could be with a customer. Or she could be asleep. In either case, he got a sandwich at their quick bar on the other side of the station and took a few minutes to himself, got lost in thought.

  He had two more unsolved robberies besides the string that Laura just solved. They were still on the brink of making a big arrest on Cold Case Card No. 2. There were multiple other things ongoing all day, every day. Speeders, drug dealers, drug users, kids playing hooky, drunk-and-disorderlies, vandalism, minor thefts, peace disturbance, domestics, car accidents, false alarms, 911 calls, assaults, medical emergencies, runaways, dog bites, neighbor fights, lost children—it was endless. Losing that one officer at a time when he was about to lose another would make the structure fall apart that he had painstakingly created with his staff. Their successes would soon become failures.

  The phone tone for Laura rang, telling him she had answered, tugging him out of the deep morass of his dark thoughts. She was feeling better but not good enough to open the shop. She’d be working on taxes today. No, she didn’t need anything, but she was happy to hear from him. In fact, she told him to stay away until she was over her bug. She added a winking emoji.

  It would have been ideal to have someone to share his burdens with, even without all the details, but Laura was out of the question. She had enough on her plate. Harry would have to do.

  Connor’s young childhood was filled with memories of peeking around the corner, watching his parents have late night conversations, his mother always supporting his father no matter what was going on at work. His dad never shared cases, but it was the politics that did him in. His parents caught him once, and his father picked him up and hugged him hard on his way back to bed. He remembered thinking something was wrong when his father tucked him in and told him how much he loved Connor.

  Is that what this was—politics? Perhaps the Kovacs brothers could help him figure out what direction he needed to take.

  It was nice to hear from Connor in the middle of his workday. She wondered how he had heard she wasn’t feeling well but figured the small town was the reason. Or Harry. Which was perfectly okay
with her. But his concern felt good. She recalled having tonsillitis once when she was very young and Connor had made her a get well card. She still had it tucked away.

  But Laura still felt listless and stopped working on tax returns after thirty minutes of reading and re-reading the same forms and losing focus. The stack of tax returns was set aside and instead, she looked up the three specific estate sale ads that had listed hand-made quilts on the Internet. The first one, the Hazelwood Estate, made mention only of antique furniture, chandeliers, classic tabletop dishes and stemware, quite a lot of sterling serving pieces as well as flatware, some jewelry. It looked as if the family had picked over what they wanted and left these items for others to get, which is what usually happened as she had discovered in the past. There was no mention of bed linens, afghans, or quilts. So the listing from the agent must have been in error. She crossed them off.

  The next two belonged to estates by the names of Dorr and Brandt. She stopped to eat.

  Beth Kovacs had brought over some wonderful homemade soup, but Laura had only been able to sip it a little at a time. The warmth helped her stomach cramping, but it took a long time for her to enjoy it all. She heated some milk on the stove and tried warm milk which helped a little, as well, but just stared at the bananas from the B.R.A.T. diet sitting on the counter and couldn’t get up any energy to snap one off the bunch or peel it. The soup and warmed milk would have to do.

  Both the Dorr and Brandt estates listed quilts and both also listed a description of them. When she looked further into both estates, she discovered that while the Brandt estate had a few quilts, it did not list a log cabin pattern. It was the Dorr estate that had the most quilts, and the woman who had died was Melanie Dorr, a lady with a reputation for creating award-winning quilts. When Laura Googled Melanie Dorr, she discovered a host of beautiful quilts, including what she believed was the very one she had downstairs.

  Laura researched the lady’s life a little more, found photos and bios describing a woman who was born into a wealthy family who lost her parents at an early age. Dorr devoted herself to encouraging the poor and women in other countries to preserve their history with story quilts to sell and help care for their families. She helped facilitate both instruction on how to make a quilt and the sales of the quilts which brought money back to those communities.

  Laura was impressed by Melanie Dorr’s dedication to helping those less fortunate and found that she had traveled not only to poorer areas in this country but also third world countries, making sure her donations and skills were spread as far as possible. Comments on this particular website were from women all over the world who had found a new way to help themselves and their communities.

  How inspiring, Laura thought, and wished she had met this lady. She went on to read more about how Melanie Dorr had suddenly become very ill and bedridden, how her mysterious illness that no doctor had been able to diagnose sapped her strength, caused her great pain, and eventually killed her. Laura regretted the lady’s illness but was grateful she had been able to do what she had. It was awesome that she likely had one of her prize quilts downstairs.

  As the soup and warm milk settled through her system, Laura set aside her research on the quilt and Melanie Dorr and resumed tax returns. She got two very simple ones done online and hit the “submit” button as official tax preparer with satisfaction. The fees for these would not be much, but they would help support her tax business which she hoped would grow in the future.

  She glanced at the stack of client folders and boxes all over the sitting room upstairs, with some clients just dumping everything into boxes for her to sort and make sense of. Others were painstaking in their record-keeping. Right now, she’d spent the little energy she had, and she went to bed.

  She fell asleep thinking more about the flawed stitching in the prize-winning quilt, Melanie Dorr, her illness and death, and what could have happened to her quilt. She knew she should find out more, but she slipped off to dreamland.

  eighteen

  As the sun rose on Friday, so did Laura’s spirits, but the stomach and abdominal cramping from the previous day remained. She drank some more warm milk and decided to open the shop for a few hours, close early and work on tax returns.

  Empress Isabella had disappeared, but Laura couldn’t think about that with all the other items on her mind. The quilt, Melanie Dorr’s mysterious sickness, what the lady had done for so many women around the world, the big stack of tax returns she had agreed to take on and do, plus her own physical problems. Among the stack of returns were three for folks from Maryland who had been her friends. She wanted to tackle those this evening; hopefully, they wouldn’t be too complicated. The one for Kayla, her good friend and the realtor who was currently renting Aunt Rose’s house, was one that Laura had done for two years and understood. The other two, she wasn’t so sure about. It might take longer to do them.

  She was glad she’d kept her Maryland license and tacked on the Minnesota one. It could only help expand her customer base.

  For today and now, though, she raised the shades on the door and front window, turned the Open sign outward, unlocked the door and hoped for customers.

  She had brought a stool from the back to sit on behind the counter until her first customer of the day came in and bought a hand-painted, heart-decorated tea set Laura had found last fall at an estate sale that was part of her Valentine’s Day collection of goods. It was beautiful porcelain; she had paid a good amount for it and gotten an even better price from her customer for the set. Her margin wasn’t high, but so far, everything had gone well enough to continue paying her rent to Harry.

  After a quick lunch of Beth’s warmed soup and another cup of warmed milk behind the counter, she wrapped up several more small sales and made notes that while her customers were buying up the Valentine’s Day items, they were also inquiring after St. Patrick’s Day items, including hats, decorations and items that could be used for prizes after the parade and gala. Whatever the customers wanted, she would have to find a way to get or their dollars would go someplace other than her register.

  At three o’clock she closed the store, went upstairs and took a break before working on tax returns. By evening she had made good progress and decided that she would do the same process until Sunday when the store was closed and she’d very likely feel much better and probably well enough to tackle most of the tax returns before restocking the store on Monday.

  Laura turned her mind to what she knew about Melanie Dorr and her illness. Maybe there was a connection between her illness and what had happened to the teal quilt. Maybe she was so ill or in pain that she could no longer handle a needle and thread. Whatever it was, Laura knew she had to look into it further. She had to understand what happened to the quilt. She felt certain it was connected with either the woman’s illness or her death or both.

  Two bakers were employed at the Kovacs Bakery, one, a man approaching middle age who had been there for years, and the other, a woman who had moved to Minnesota from Georgia only two years before. Will was pleased with both their skill sets and the tasty family recipes they brought with them. Their personalities were another matter. While Bob Ferguson made cakes and pastries that were out of this world, he was constantly grumpy and rude in conversations with the customers, so Will kept him in the back room, mixing and baking away to his heart’s content. On the other hand, Kitty Lenz charmed everyone she met with sweetly accented words, a generous smile, and scrumptious caramel sea salt fudge, brownies and cookies. Will considered himself lucky to have found two such talented individuals. Business was booming.

  But Will Kovacs wasn’t at the bakery today.

  There was a good reason Bob Ferguson was called “Grumpy Gus” by those who knew him even a little bit well and sometimes by those who didn’t know him except in passing.

  Kitty Lenz was getting a good lesson in Bob Ferguson 101 when she arrived late for her shift.<
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  Ferguson glared at her, an expression he didn’t even have to try to make unpleasant. The furrows in his forehead, the scrunched, shaggy dark eyebrows, pursed lips—these were all there much of the time whenever he wasn’t engaged in baking or if anyone interrupted him. Today, they were only a little more pronounced.

  “I don’t like customers. I don’t like dealing with them. I don’t like it when you’re not here on time. I just bake and open. Sometimes I close. I don’t sell, and today because you were late, I had to deal with customers.”

  He didn’t bother using her name, figured he didn’t have to. She was the only other person in the Kovacs Bakery at the moment.

  “I’m really sorry, Bob. My car wouldn’t start this morning. I had to get Mickey’s Wreck Shop to come charge the battery.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like customers. You should have called a cab.”

  And so it went. Throughout her shift until it was time for him to leave, every time she went in the back where he was baking and decorating special order cakes, she received a constant taste of his displeasure. To avoid him, she polished cases, counters, and even the register so she wouldn’t have to go into the back.

  Usually Will Kovacs came in at this time to help out until Bob left, but there was no respite. Kitty was on her own. She was supposed to be making more fudge today, but she refused to do that with Ferguson on her case the way he was.

  Kitty skipped her lunch break so Bob could take his and she could take some pleasure with the bakery customers. They were always in a good mood as they cast their eyes over the yummies behind the glass. She thought their moods, regardless of which side of the bed they had gotten up on, changed the minute they opened that door, entering a place of wonderful smells and leaving the stresses and problems of their lives behind them. She double-stocked everything up front during that wonderful lunch break.

  Ferguson returned from his lunch, but Kitty didn’t see him again until he left for the day.