Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series

by Belle Knudson

“Nothing important,” she said, but her answer didn’t land quite right. Jason wasn’t going to let her brush over the truth so easily. “He’s running his investigation his way,” she said as though her hands were tied. “But everything he told the Langleys is true. He’s going to put a tap on their phones. And the kidnapper is going to get in touch. We need to take it as a good sign.”

  Jason sighed, shaking his head and becoming withdrawn.

  “Can I give you a ride home?” she offered.

  “I have to get over to the amusement park site,” he said.

  She cocked her brow at that.

  “I have to work,” he shrugged. “And Dean’s taking applications from local contractors.”

  Kate smirked encouragingly. “I can drop you off. Just give me a minute to say bye to the Langleys.” As she walked back into dining room, she wondered if Dean collecting applications was another performance like the town meeting had been, or if he was actually in a position to hire. Last she had heard, Six Flags had a policy of only hiring their own construction team, a fact that Dean had completely overlooked. She hoped for Jason’s sake that the mayor had been able to pull a few strings.

  After telling Amelia and Lance not to hesitate getting in touch with her if they needed anything, Kate returned to Jason in the foyer, and they walked outside where Scott was on his cell phone. She locked eyes with him, as she and Jason passed him on the walkway, and then when they reached her truck, she had an idea.

  “Do you have to drop the application off at the site, or can you leave it with Jared at the mayor’s office?”

  Jason considered this, as he got settled behind the wheel. I guess I could leave it with Jared and Dean.”

  “Great, because I need to check out Jared’s new office anyway.”

  Kate eased her truck away from the curb and started down the street, cutting through the center of town where Bean There was calling to her. She was long overdue for a fresh cup, but couldn’t afford the pit stop, not if she wanted to finish Meredith’s patio on schedule. If she had a free moment, it would be for family, not coffee.

  “For the record,” said Jason, as he folded his arms and flicked his eyes at her. “I know what Scott thinks of all this, of me.”

  “He’s just doing his job.”

  “He grilled me for five minutes about why I happened to be near the Langley’s house. Why was I out for a walk? Where was my car? All this, while Amelia and Lance were seated in the next room. They could’ve easily heard every word. Can you believe that? Their daughter has been abducted and Scott’s giving them the impression I’m responsible.”

  “Scott doesn’t think you’re responsible,” she said, but was quickly met with Jason’s dropped jaw. “Alright, look,” she went on, resolving not to sugarcoat it for him anymore. “He’s skeptical, but he’s skeptical of Becky. He knows you, Jason. I doubt he truly thinks you’re capable of this, but Becky was cut out of her parents' fortune. You guys have been struggling—”

  “We’re doing fine,” he objected.

  “Well, Scott is simply wondering if perhaps Becky orchestrated this and roped you in.”

  “Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”

  She did.

  Kate turned up Rock Ridge Road, taking a short cut behind Main Street to get to the municipal complex where the mayor’s office was located.

  After a moment of debating with herself whether or not to mention what she had seen the other night at Daisy’s Luncheonette, she decided she might as well come out with it and see if she could gauge Jason’s reaction. But she waited until she was pulling into a parking spot in front of the mayor’s building before uttering one word.

  She threw the truck into park and killed the engine, turning towards her son.

  “I honestly don’t know what’s going on, honey, but when we all ate dinner at Daisy’s the other night, I glanced out the window to the parking lot, and I could’ve sworn I saw Becky.”

  Jason’s expression went blank, and she couldn’t get a read on him, but she had to assume he was about to be furious.

  “How could you have seen her, Mom? No one can find her.”

  “No one else looks like her.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  At this point, she wouldn’t rule it out.

  “Let’s say Becky orchestrated this whole thing to get money,” he went on, playing devil’s advocate. “If that were true, why in the hell would she show her face at Daisy’s? She wouldn’t.”

  He had a point. And he was smart enough to suddenly realize the bizarre connection that Kate herself had already questioned.

  “You think,” he started up again, this time laughing, “she came out of hiding to murder Clifford Green, a man she’s never met and has nothing to do with?”

  “The bottom line is that I care about you and I’m worried about you. If there’s anything you’re not telling Scott and me...” she trailed off, not wanting to press her point since it would have to be delivered with the worst possible scenario that she couldn’t bear to consider.

  “I’m being completely honest,” he asserted. “I’ve told Scott everything. And quite frankly, if I’ve made any mistakes, it’s the fact that I have been honest. It seems like the more I tell him, the less he believes me. God!” he blurted out, suddenly overcome with the emotion she had been expecting. “How long have I known him? How long has he known me? And he thinks I’m behind this?”

  His outrage was rolling off of him, and Kate couldn’t blame him.

  “Let’s see about getting your application to Dean,” she suggested, popping her door open and climbing out.

  Jason followed, pulling out the application he had kept folded in his jeans and smoothing the pages open, as they made their way inside.

  After a quick elevator ride, they stepped out on the mayor’s floor, and when they entered the office, Kate found Jared tucked behind his cluttered desk. The receptionist accepted Jason’s application, as Kate smiled at Jared, getting his attention.

  “I thought I’d take a look at that new office of yours and make a list,” she said, giving him a hug.

  “Definitely, right this way.” Jared plucked a pen and notepad off his desk then led her down the hall.

  The storage closet was almost empty, but a stack of boxes remained at the back.

  “We’re going to get these archived into our storage unit in the basement,” he explained, indicated the boxes.

  “It’s a little dark in here,” she pointed out, worried for him that she had been right. There wasn’t a window. “I could paint the walls a bright color.”

  “As long as it isn’t white,” he said. “With the fluorescents, I’m afraid the glare would be nauseating.”

  “Grayson’s has a lot to choose from,” she suggested. “Maybe a light blue, something cheerful.”

  “That sounds great,” he said. “Most importantly, I need shelves. I’ve ordered a couple units, but they’ll need to be assembled.”

  “When will they arrive?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “It’s going to take a full day to paint.”

  “Whatever your timeline, we’ll make it work.” When she turned for the hallway, he said, “How’s Jason holding up?”

  “You heard about the note?”

  Jared leveled his gaze on her as if to say, “How could I not?”

  “He’s applying to work at the amusement park, and I’m going to lean on Dean to get him hired right away. He needs structure and something to take his mind off of Becky. That is, if Dean is really hiring.”

  “He’s going to do what he can,” said Jared. “We found a loop hole in our contract with Six Flags and the attorney is going over it, but it looks promising.”

  Returning to the anteroom where Dean was in the midst of explaining to Jason the ins and outs of the amusement park’s construction timeline, Kate hung back so as not to interrupt.

  “Hiya, Kate,” said Dean. “When can we expect you in to work on Jared’s office
?”

  “A few days. I’m wrapping up a big project now.”

  “Right,” he said. “Meredith Joste’s house. I’ll be curious to see who ends up buying it.”

  “I’ll be more curious to see where Meredith ends up living,” she countered.

  “You didn’t hear?” asked Dean, who seemed to always have his thumb on the pulse of gossip before anyone else could get a read on it. He was nearly as bad as Celia. “She’s leaving Rock Ridge.”

  “She is?” She was surprised that Meredith hadn’t mentioned a thing to her in all the days she’d been laying down patio tiles. Kate asked, “Where?”

  “My understanding is that she’s sick of the long winters. She wants sun year round.”

  Kate did not see that coming and made a mental note to ask Meredith about it.

  “Wow,” she said, before turning to Jason. “Ready?”

  Jared interrupted. “I can drive him home.”

  “Yeah?” asked Jason.

  “Yeah, I can take an early lunch.”

  “Okay,” said Kate, please to have a few extra minutes now that she wouldn’t have to drive Jason to his house. “Have fun, kids.”

  As she made her way down to her truck, she decided she could use the time to stop off at Grayson’s and pick up the paint she would need for Jared’s office. She was glad Jason had accepted his brother’s offer. As twins, they had always been exceptionally close, but over their adult years and especially since Jason had become involved with Becky, the two had less and less time for one another. And then when Becky disappeared and Jason fell into depression, it had seemed as if the brothers’ relationship was on the verge of shattering. But if Jason could get hired and focused, and make time for Jared, then Jared could help Jason deal with the mystery of what had happened to Becky.

  After all, that was what Kate had done when Greg had gone missing. She had thrown herself into her work, kept busy, kept focused, and eventually time healed the wound.

  Not that she wanted Jason to have to get used to any of this. Most of all, she wanted Becky home, safe and sound. But the longer Scott investigated and the more information was brought to her attention, the more skeptical she became regarding Becky Langley’s innocence in all of this.

  What if Scott was right? What if Kate had seen Becky that night? And what if the bizarre ransom note was a very small piece to a much larger puzzle?

  As she pulled into Grayson’s Hardware, it crossed her mind that Meredith might be concerned over how long Kate had been away from the house, but when she dialed Meredith and got her outgoing voice message for the fourth time that day, it occurred to her that something might be up with Meredith. She never seemed to be around. She was selling her house. And now, according to Dean, she wasn’t merely going to downgrade into a more affordable mortgage at a different house in Rock Ridge, but she was going to pick up and leave the town all together. Residents rarely left Rock Ridge. It was a beautiful town, and once people moved here, they simply didn’t consider leaving. Why was Meredith suddenly compelled to move away? It couldn’t be because of the weather, could it?

  When she stepped inside the hardware store, Larry was ringing up a customer’s items behind the counter, but he still greeted her.

  “I’m going to check out the paint!” she called over her shoulder, as she disappeared into the indoor paint section.

  As she perused the options, the day she and Greg painted the twins’ baby room came to mind. Long before she started her Mrs. Fix It business, she had loved painting the house and fixing up what needed fixing. Even when she had been in her third trimester, waddling around with twins, she didn’t shy away from making repairs. She had painted the boys room bright yellow and stenciled animals in gray on the walls—elephants and giraffes and other safari creatures.

  Kate found a color that Jared might like. It was a soft yellow shade, not too bright. She pulled two cans from the shelf and carried them to the counter.

  “Jared’s getting a new office at the mayor’s,” she explained.

  “Good for him,” said Larry.

  “The room is about twelve by ten.”

  “Yikes,” he said then quickly corrected his reaction. “I mean, cozy.”

  She smirked. “I’m thinking I’ll need three more cans.”

  “Yeah, that should cover it.” Larry turned one of the paint cans so that the label was facing him and read the brand and sku-number. “Tell you what, why don’t you pull your truck around to the back, and I’ll load the cans in.”

  “I need some rollers and paint tins, as well.”

  “No problem, I’ll get it all collected.”

  Larry rang up the items. “Pay today or start a new tab?” he asked.

  “Can I start a new tab?”

  “Certainly.”

  Kate carried the two cans she had with her out to her truck and set them in the bed then drove around to the back of the hardware store where Larry was waiting with more cans. She kept her truck idling as she stepped out and helped him load up the items into the back. Larry left momentarily then returned with the paint rollers and other materials she had mentioned, plus a few paint-stirring sticks and a drop cloth.

  “How’s Carly doing?” she asked.

  “Better now,” he said. “But she was really shaken up. Do you know if Scott has any leads?”

  “He didn’t mention it.”

  “I doubt she’ll really relax until he has the culprit in custody. That’s what she’s worried most about, that she’ll be arrested.”

  “She won’t,” said Kate, reassuringly. “Scott knows what he’s doing, and he’s not going to arrest the wrong person.”

  Larry narrowed his eyes on her. “Kate,” he said in a kind tone that also conveyed he begged to differ, “Scott has a long history of arresting the wrong people. I was one of them, remember? If people in this town have any faith in him, it’s because marrying you showed excellent judgment. I think the residents around here are counting on you to set him straight when he veers off the mark.” Larry paused to take a deep breath. “But I’ve got to tell you... people are getting really worried.”

  She grimaced, having an idea of where he was going with this.

  “At this point, he’s investigating Jason for Becky’s disappearance?” He had phrased it like a question, but it sounded like a statement. “If he can think such a thing about his own family, about his wife’s son, then what hope does Carly have of not being falsely accused?”

  She didn’t know what she could say to set his mind at ease.

  “You have to keep your eye on him.” She told him she would and was about to climb into her truck, when he stopped her, saying, “I did some asking around about Clifford. I don’t know who might have killed him, but I found out that Dean had hired him to work at the amusement park. Dean’s hiring a lot of ex-cons, cheap labor and all. It sounds to me that with Clifford’s history, there could be a long list of people who wanted him dead.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said, making a mental note that she ought to drive by the site and check it out. “Give Carly my best.”

  She hopped up behind the wheel and started off for Meredith’s house.

  To Kate’s surprise, when she pulled up to the curb, she saw that Meredith’s car was in the driveway and the front door was wide open. After locking her truck and starting up the walkway, she heard Meredith speaking to someone. She gradually recognized the voice as Justina’s, the head agent at Carnegie Real Estate.

  “Kate,” Justina exclaimed, as soon as she stepped through the door. “Just who we were talking about.”

  “Yes?”

  “As you know, we’re getting this house ready to put on the market. Are you available to stage it?”

  “I can make myself available,” she said. “But as I mentioned to Meredith, the furniture looks great. I’m not sure what I might add.”

  “The movers are coming tonight,” Justina explained. “It should be empty by tomorrow, and I’d like to start showing
it this weekend.”

  Taken aback, Kate scrambled to mentally view her calendar. “I have a job at the mayor’s office,” she explained, as soon as she’d wrapped her head around it, “but I can pick up furniture after hours. Most of the stores are open until nine anyway.”

  “Great,” said Justina, clapping her hands together as if to conclude the conversation. “You can stop by Carnegie to pick up your budget. We’ve upgraded our system and have a credit card for you. Once you give us a breakdown of proposed expenditures, we’ll approve them and give you the card.”

  All Kate heard was that she’d have to do a hell of a lot of pricing research before she would actually be able to get down to business, but she agreed, and Meredith saw her off.

  Kate smelled fresh coffee in the kitchen, so she helped herself to a mug and then padded through the living room and let herself out onto the patio.

  After gulping down more than half the mug, she set it on the ground and began laying out the remaining tiles.

  Meredith widened the doorway and stepped out with her own mug of coffee.

  “Looks good,” she said. “You’ll be finished tomorrow?”

  “I’ll certainly do my best,” she said, sitting back on her heels to look up at Meredith. “So you’re thinking of moving out of Rock Ridge?”

  Meredith’s face went slack, and then she threw her head back, laughing and then shaking it with a sly smile on her face. “This town,” she mused. “There’s no sense of privacy, is there?”

  “Not really,” said Kate, who had worked hard to keep to herself so she could avoid being the center of the rumor mill.

  “Yes, I won’t be staying in town.”

  “What if it takes more time to sell the house?” she asked, remembering the difficulty Meredith had when she attempted to sell years prior. As beautiful as the art deco design was, it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and Justina had made virtually no headway getting anyone to buy it.

  “This time it’s different,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “I’m taking the plunge.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning…I’ve already found a cute little condo in Tampa.”

  “Florida?”

  “I can’t do another Rock Ridge winter,” she explained. “And the condo I found is quite reasonable. If worse comes to worse, I have ways of managing the rent down there and keeping up with the mortgage on this house. But I have faith Justina will work some magic and sell the place.” Meredith’s gaze wandered over the compacted dirt area where Kate had yet to lay tiles. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”