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

by Belle Knudson

Rock Ridge Medical was on the south side of town to best serve the entire county. As soon as Kate approached the admissions desk, the nurse behind the counter recognized her by name.

  “The police chief’s wife,” she stated in a knowing tone, as she typed into her computer. “Lance Langley is already in surgery.”

  “Surgery?”

  “Yes,” she said, quickly flicking her eyes to Kate then returning them to her computer monitor as she pulled up the details on the screen. “He had four broken ribs—”

  “That required surgery?” she asked, alarmed.

  “No. As it turned out, we caught an embolism when we gave him a CAT scan. It would’ve killed him if untreated. In a very strange way, he’s lucky he got in when he did.”

  “Really?”

  The nurse, whose badge said Haley Powers, smirked at her. “We’ll keep you posted. There’s a waiting room on the second floor if you and your family would like to go up. The ER waiting room can be stressful.”

  Kate glanced around. The ER waiting room was virtually empty, except for a woman and her screaming toddler. She thanked Haley, anyway, and turned for Amelia, who was hunched in a nervous ball on one of the chairs.

  Jason couldn’t bear to sit. Instead he was pacing, but in a way that didn’t strike Kate as concerned for his future father-in-law.

  “Let’s go up to the second floor.”

  “Why?” asked Amelia, her eyes widening as though she feared the worst.

  “I’m told Lance is in surgery for an unrelated matter.”

  “What unrelated matter?”

  “An embolism.”

  “Just tell me if he’ll live or die,” she snapped.

  “The nurse didn’t say.”

  Reluctantly, Amelia got to her feet. “I can’t lose my daughter and my husband.”

  “You haven’t lost either,” she said in a reassuring tone that only seemed to incite Amelia, though she walked beside Kate towards the elevators.

  Once everyone was inside, they rode it up to the second floor and spent the next two hours waiting for any word on Lance’s condition. All the while, Kate expected to see Scott step out of the elevator, but he never did.

  It wasn’t until four in the morning when the resident surgeon met them in the waiting area to tell them Lance would pull through just fine, but needed to stay at the hospital for a few days under observation. Amelia burst with happy tears, but Jason didn’t look nearly as relieved.

  Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Chapter Two

  The next day, Kate permitted herself to sleep in. She hit the snooze three times before giving up, turning her alarm off, and falling back into a deep sleep, only vaguely aware that Scott was not beside her.

  By the time she woke, feeling well rested, the clock on the nightstand read eleven. She bolted upright. She hadn’t slept in like that since the rare occasions, decades prior, when her twin toddlers had made it through a morning without crying.

  Getting out of bed, two things were on her mind—coffee and Lance Langley, and in that order. She hadn’t heard from Amelia or Scott, so she figured that no news was good news, but as she scooped coffee grinds, filling her machine, she cued up Amelia’s number on her cell phone.

  The second the dark roast began tricking down, she sent the call through, holding her cell to her ear and hoping she wouldn’t wake Amelia.

  When the line opened up, Amelia sounded exhausted. “Kate,” she said. “Any news?”

  “Ah, no. Scott didn’t come home last night. If his team found nothing, he would’ve made it back, though, so I’d take this as a good sign.” After a brief pause, waiting for Amelia’s response and receiving none, she asked, “What about Lance?”

  “Oh, he’s still resting. He woke up a few times, but these doctors have him on so many drugs, I’m not sure he knows where he is. I’ve been in his room with him. I slept on a chair. It’s been miserable.”

  “I’m glad to hear he’s okay.”

  “Listen, Kate,” she began, trailing off. Kate could hear her padding slowly across the linoleum of Lance’s hospital room. “I’m really not sure I have any say in the matter, but I question Scott’s competency.” She tried interjecting to assure Amelia that her family was in good hands, but Amelia immediately cut her off. “I don’t know how to get Becky back, but I know Scott isn’t the answer. He’s part of the problem.”

  “No one could’ve foreseen this,” she said, though in a reasoning tone.

  “I beg to differ.” She sighed. “Like I said, I’m sure I don’t have a say, but I’m telling you this, and you can tell Scott when you see him: Lance and I won’t be cooperating in the future. We can’t put our lives at risk. God forbid Becky had been there. What if she was killed?”

  “Let’s not jump to the worst-case scenario—”

  “Oh, I’ve jumped there. I built a house and pay taxes in the land of worst-case scenarios. I’m not putting my family at risk again. Just stay away from us. Please.”

  Kate heard a click through the receiver.

  As she sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, she pulled up the calendar on her cell phone to refresh her memory as to her day’s schedule. Jared’s new office would need a shelving unit installed among other fixtures, and Jessica Wentworth had e-mailed her about helping her organize the business side of her home-based fashion company. She scrolled through the e-mail, noting the bullet points as detailed by Jessica and gleaned the job would require a trip to the Container Store and Grayson’s, since Jessica needed the wobbly legs of one of her work tables fixed.

  Considering Jared might not make it into the office today in favor of spending time with Jason, Kate decided to handle that job first and swing by Jessica’s in the late afternoon.

  As she finished her coffee, showered, and dressed, she hoped Lance’s hospital stay and the botched ransom wouldn’t derail Jason’s life once again.

  Dean Wentworth, as mayor, had virtually no time to manage the construction of the new amusement park, which was barely underway. He had appointed Jason the head of Wentworth Contractors to see the job through. But if Jason didn’t show up for work, his title might not be his for very long.

  Noting the time as soon as she hopped into her truck—the clock on the dash read a quarter to noon—Kate devised to make Grayson’s her first stop. It was a fair bet that Larry would be out to lunch, but she knew the hardware store like the back of her hand, and his employees could easily handle carrying the heavier items out to her truck.

  She rolled the windows down and backed out, swinging around and starting off down her long, winding driveway. As hot as it was outside, the fresh air felt good. Cutting through the center of town, she noted all the pedestrians on the street strolling and pausing to glance through store windows. Outside of Bean There were a number of café tables, residents seated and enjoying their long, lazy lunch breaks. She could almost smell the dark roast wafting out of the coffee shop as she passed, and she had to fight the urge to stop in for a cup. She was late enough as it was.

  To her surprise, Larry was not at lunch but behind the counter, she noticed as soon as she stepped into Grayson’s Hardware. The store sounded quiet, and she sensed he had no customers.

  “Kate,” he said as if surprised to see her.

  Clearly, he had heard about the shocking night she and her family had survived.

  Preemptively, she shrugged, saying, “What else would I do?”

  “So you weren’t hurt?”

  “No, not at all. The boys and I were in a van down the road. Amelia Langley, as well.”

  “Thank God,” he said, releasing a huge tension-filled breath. “We have to stick together.”

  She cocked her brow at that, approaching the counter.

  “You didn’t read the paper?” he asked, his eyes widening as he tucked the Rock Ridge Gazette under the table.

  “I caught up on some sleep,” she said, nervously intrigued at all he was hinting. “We have a reporter problem?”

 
“In more ways than one. Demblowski ran a doomsday article this morning, plus I heard Over the Moon got booked up overnight. Reporters from out of town.” Larry shook his head. “This town is changing.”

  “Let me see the article,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “You know I can stop by any newsstand if I want.”

  Hesitant as he was, he offered her the paper.

  “Crime Climbs in Rock Ridge, No One Safe.”

  Great, she thought, that’s just what Dean’s amusement park needs.

  “No one’s going to want to live here, much less book vacations during the summer months.”

  Considering his point, she wasn’t sure that was all that bad. If Kate worried about anything, it was tourists falling in love with her quaint town, moving here, changing things, and Kate waking up one morning to find she didn’t recognize a thing. If reporters were feeding into hysterics that would prevent her nightmares from coming true, it might not be a bad thing. Not that she wanted reporters swarming through her town, either.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Larry went on. “Tensions are rising. People around here are starting to worry about the convicts who have moved to town. And now we have reporters highlighting tragedies. I know I don’t have to connect the dots for you, but the good people of Rock Ridge could very well start pointing their fingers at all those ex-con construction workers over at the amusement park. We could have a real situation on our hands, and these articles only fuel the fire.”

  Kate couldn’t tell him he was wrong, as she scanned the article and fantasized about punching the smug Eric Demblowski in the face. She had never liked the guy, and her feelings toward him only became tangled when she had discovered his secret affair with Celia Johnson. Larry was likely right in terms of the residents' knee-jerk reaction to articles like the one she was trying and failing to absorb. But the fact of the matter was that of the two murders that had befallen Rock Ridge in the last month—Cookie Halpert and Clifford Green—neither had been committed by the ex-cons, but the longtime residents of Rock Ridge, namely Officer Gunther and Daisy Meriwether.

  Eric Demblowski’s article completely failed to mention the real killers. Instead, it sensationalized the probability that Rock Ridge could expect more murders and anyone could be next.

  “Try not to feed into the hysteria,” she advised. “And don’t talk to reporters.”

  “You know me,” he said with a chuckle. “I keep to myself.”

  Larry did. Ever since he had been falsely accused of murder after his very own father had been arrested for doing such a thing, Larry was careful about what he said and to whom.

  “I have a long list today,” she said, setting the newspaper on the counter and pulling her handwritten list out of her overalls. Jotting down a list of materials while maneuvering her truck along Main Street hadn’t been her smoothest operation, and Kate realized she could barely read her own jagged handwriting. “I’ll give a holler if I need anything.”

  Kate padded around to the shopping dollies that were kept on the far side of the counter, pulled one from the bunch, and rounded up the building materials aisle where there was a variety of boards, planks, two-by-fours, and dowels, all of which could be useful in fixing Jessica’s work table.

  As she collected what she needed for the day, pulling wood from the shelves onto her dolly, Kate sent a brief text message to Jessica proposing she aim to stop in at three in the afternoon and then hopped on the phone. Dean picked up on the first ring.

  “You okay?” he asked urgently in a manner not unlike Larry’s.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Scott is fine. Amelia and Jason and Jared are fine. Lance is going to be in the hospital a few days, but things are looking good.”

  Dean sighed with relief into the receiver, but a distinct tension followed.

  “Jason’s really fine?” he asked.

  “In terms of life or death, he is,” she offered. “He hasn’t called you, has he?”

  “Hasn’t called. Hasn’t shown up at the site. I need a construction manager at the top of this pyramid or else the whole thing is going to collapse.”

  “Can you give him a day or two?” She winced as she asked, anticipating that Dean was already at the end of his rope with Jason.

  “One day, Kate. Then I have to make a decision.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Thank you,” he said, but he sounded disgruntled.

  “And I’ll see you in a bit. I’m going to finish Jared’s office today.”

  “Ah,” he grumbled. “He’s not going to like moving into the hallway.”

  “He’s at work today?”

  “Apparently. Look, I know Jason was the one whose fiancée was abducted and Jared isn’t shouldering the bulk of the burden—”

  “I got it, Dean,” she said impatiently to get him to ease off the pressure. She had enough of that in her life already. “I said I’ll talk to him and I will.”

  As she ended the call and tucked her cell into her overalls, she wondered about her boys. Jared wasn’t one to choose work over his brother, not at a time like this. So why was he at work? Jason’s reaction to the doctor’s update at the hospital crossed her mind. He hadn’t looked relieved. He had looked anxious. Why would good news make him anxious?

  She wanted to believe this was all a classic case of Jason pushing his family away, but she was getting the nagging feeling that it might go deeper—much deeper than that.

  After ringing up Kate’s materials at the register, Larry helped her load the items into the back of her truck.

  “Be careful out there,” he said.

  In response, she shot him a sarcastic smirk. The last killer had thrown her into the back of a van, not to mention Kate had stumbled upon countless bodies over the years. Careful wasn’t what she was, and yet nothing bad had happened. His warning was falling on deaf ears. But she told him she would watch her step and climbed up behind the wheel.

  Pulling out of the loading area, she fought the urge to call Jason. First, she would talk to Jared and find out how Jason had spent the long night after they had left the hospital. Once she got a read on her darker son, she would devise how to handle saving his job with Wentworth Contractors.

  She did, however, call Scott the second she pulled into a parking spot in front of the municipal building.

  “Hey,” she said when his deep and comforting voice came through the line. “I’m working in your building today.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “For a few hours, anyway. Got to finish Jared’s new office... We could get a late lunch slash early dinner in a few hours before I head off to Jessica Wentworth’s house.”

  “We could,” he said, trailing off in such a way that indicated he would like to see her but probably wouldn’t.

  “You never made it home last night.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “I would’ve called or texted, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Lance is doing just fine.”

  “I heard. Thank God. I’ve been reaching out to Amelia, but she hasn’t returned my calls.”

  “Yeah, about that,” she said, taking a stuttering breath and choosing her words carefully. “She kind of implied she wasn’t planning on cooperating. But she’s just scared, I’m sure. She’ll come around.”

  “I’m not so sure she will.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Let’s just say my team found a few things at the site, and matters have gotten very complicated.”

  “Scott, don’t do this to me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t provoke me into doing something to cause a fight.”

  “Kate, you’re getting a little abstract for me to follow.”

  “Tell me what you know or else I’m going to go poking around. You know me.”

  At this point, her impulse to solve murders was bordering on addiction. She couldn’t help herself, and Scott alluding to clues without sh
aring them would only incite her to drop everything and dig until she exposed every last detail.

  “I have to get off the phone. I’m going into a meeting. We’ll talk tonight. Dinner?”

  “Will you be home for dinner?”

  “Definitely,” he said, but quickly revised his answer. “Probably. Can’t commit to a specific time, but I won’t be working all night. I promise.”

  She couldn’t wait up for him. Last night had been a long one, and Kate’s life worked best when she woke up with the sun and got a jump on fixing all that was broken in Rock Ridge, but she didn’t pressure him into committing or mention her schedule, both of which could risk starting a tiff.

  “Let me know,” she said. She told him she loved him and got off the phone.

  When she rounded the back of her truck and evaluated the materials, the bulk of which were for Jessica’s fashion studio and not her son’s new office, Kate grabbed her toolkit and started for the entrance.

  As soon as she got to the mayor’s office floor, she was hit with a wall of heat.

  “It has to be a hundred degrees in here!” she exclaimed to no one in particular as she passed through the anteroom and found Jared grunting and complaining about once again moving his work station into the hall outside his new office.

  He was covered in sweat, and though he had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, his shirt was stained dark from perspiration.

  “You’re telling me?” he said, setting a filing box on his desk, which was blocking the hall at an awkward angle. “Not only has the air conditioning broke, but maintenance can’t seem to figure out how to shut the air off. It’s been blasting hot air from outside all morning.”

  “Did you try opening the windows?”

  Exasperated, he gestured to the window at the far end of the hall. It was wide open with a fan in front of it.

  “Sucking ninety degree summer air into the office isn’t my favorite strategy,” he grumbled. “And after the night I’ve had, I don’t need this.”

  Nearing him, she set her toolkit on the floor in front of his desk to free her hands.

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  He sighed. “Friggin’ Jason.” It took him a long moment of shaking his head and staring off into space before he thought of what to say. “He would not let me pull him out of his dark hole last night. We’re all devastated.” Jared locked eyes with her and Kate nearly teared up seeing the pain flowing out of him. Jared had always been so sensitive. If Jason were hurt, Jared would take it on in an effort to lessen his twin's burden. She was distraught for the both of them over this. “I tried everything last night, but of course he did his usual Jason thing, wallowing and snapping at me. He kicked me out, you know.”