Marcy glared at her as though disgusted that the help would be allowed to attend the event, but Kate didn’t give a good goddamn. She grabbed her tool kit from the floor, shot Marcy one last assertive look, and started through the ballroom.
When she entered into the corridor, her sneakers tapping across the polished, marble floor, she heard voices billowing out from the kitchen, the library, and the many rooms throughout the mansion—everyone hustling and bustling to transform this place into a home fit for a king.
She couldn’t wait to get out of there and spend time with her daughter, Josie, whose personality had been blossoming recently. Josie was nine months old. She still liked to pick out her own clothes, if cooing and grasping for garments constituted “picking out,” that is. She had also begun “singing” and she loved listening to music and dancing around while seated on the floor. Kate and Scott had bought her a few maracas, which she couldn’t get enough of. If Josie wasn’t napping or eating, she was shaking those maracas and smiling at the sound.
As Kate made her way through the grand foyer—lofty ceilings overhead, the area bathed in natural light that was streaming through windows—she smiled at a few of the waiters rushing in.
Outside, the sun was lowering, though it wasn’t yet dusk. The light looked amber, pouring through the trees along the edge of the property. The estate really was breathtaking.
She set her tool kit into the bed of her truck and climbed in behind the steering wheel. As she reversed away from the entrance and backed out, she spied two trucks from Corey’s Cabinets making their way up the long and winding driveway.
She bypassed them, waving at Justina who was seated in the passenger’s seat of the second truck, and then drove to the wrought-iron gate, braking only to give the guard a chance to roll the gate open.
As she drove home, she began debating with the one thing that had been weighing heavily on her mind for the past two months—whether or not she wanted to continue to work as a handy woman. She loved her job. It gave her purpose and made her feel close with the residents. She wasn’t particularly social otherwise, and the idea of hanging up her tool belt made her worry that she’d lose touch with all the people she had come to know. But the fact of the matter was that now that she had Josie, she didn’t need to fix Rock Ridge in order to feel a sense of purpose. And she didn’t want to continue to miss out on all the little moments in her daughter’s life because she was away from home, fixing leaky sinks, building balconies, or constructing mansions that had no business being built in her town.
She had brought the issue up with Scott but only a few times, and she hadn’t indicated that she was very serious about retiring from handy work in order to be a full-time mommy. Scott had seemed both supportive and wary when she’d offhandedly mentioned the idea. He would prefer that Kate be home with their daughter since their babysitter, Maxwell had been the only one to catch Josie’s monumental moments: her first crawl and her first word. But Scott had never completely trusted her when it came to Kate’s interest in the unfortunate murders that had befallen Rock Ridge. Though he had never admitted it, she could tell that he was worried she would meddle even more in police business if she didn’t have a job to occupy her.
And he might be right about that.
Kate drove up the long and winding driveway, and then pulled her truck to a stop in front of her house. Scott’s truck was parked, so she figured he must have just gotten home.
They had agreed to be supportive of Dean Wentworth because of the upcoming election and attend the fundraiser, but Kate knew that Scott wasn’t looking forward to it. It was a black-tie event and getting Scott to go down to the suit store on his day off had been a big enough challenge. Kate couldn’t blame him, however. She was much more comfortable in her t-shirt and overalls and couldn’t even remember the last time she’d worn a fancy dress...their wedding? It was hard to say. Worse was the fact that neither of them wanted to spend another night away from their daughter.
She sighed, climbing out of her truck, and when she entered through the front door, she called out, “I’m home!”
Maxwell said, “How’s it going?” from where he sat with Josie on the living room floor. Josie was playing with a deck of cards, or rather smearing them across the ground and smiling at how slippery they were. “Is the mansion finished?”
“Finally,” she said, plopping onto the sofa-chair. “I can’t believe I have the day off tomorrow. It’s been ten hour days for sixty days straight.”
Maxwell grinned up at her, pointing out, “You’ve grabbed a day off here and there.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“Well, your schedule is wide open now, right?”
“Not exactly,” she said, scooping Josie into her arms and returning to the sofa-chair. As she sat, she helped Josie onto her lap. “A bunch of people need minor repairs and I’ve been putting them off until I had time. Now I have time.”
Scott grumbled his way down the hallway and into the living room, as he fiddled with his cuff links. Though he was dressed in a tuxedo, his button down was undone and his black suspenders were flopping against his legs. “I can’t get these damn things to hold.”
Kate motioned to get to her feet, but Maxwell hopped up, reminding her that she wouldn’t be much help with Josie in her arms.
Scott seemed reluctant to allow their babysitter to fasten his cuff links, but Maxwell was already on it.
“I need a drink,” he complained when Maxwell returned to the floor. “Kate? You want a glass of wine?”
She couldn’t say that she did, but the thought of attending a black-tie event where she would hardly know anyone set her teeth on edge. Though the fundraiser would benefit Dean, her longtime friend, the majority of guests would actually be friends of Hans Geoffrey, and therefore, complete strangers.
“Do we still have Riesling?” When he reached the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door, he noted that they did and she mentioned, “I need to hop in the shower.”
“Can’t we be fashionably late?” he asked, as he poured her a glass of wine. “I’d like to be so fashionably late that we miss the whole damn thing altogether,” he grumbled, starting back with her wine and a stout glass of scotch for himself.
She made a mental note that she should drive them over.
Maxwell collected Josie and settled onto the couch as Kate took the glass from Scott.
After a moment of deep breathing and a few sips of wine, she set the glass on the coffee table and excused herself to the bathroom, where she showered and fretted over whether or not she should do her hair.
Ever since the haircut she’d gotten at Harriet’s Hairdos, she’d kept up with a few trims. Her red hair was cropped in a sleek bob that fell to her chin, so she wouldn’t be able to tie her hair up in a classic bun, which was too bad because doing so would eliminate the needs to really give too much thought to how she would style her hair.
She showered quickly and then wrestled with a hair-drier as she combed her hair. When it was dry, she decided she’d done a good enough job and began putting on makeup.
Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her and when she reached her closet in the bedroom, she stared vacantly at the formal dress she had bought last week.
Long and emerald green, which the salesgirl said would bring out the color of her red hair, the dress was satin and had a tight bodice and a flowing skirt. As she wriggled into the dress, Scott returned to put on his dress shoes, sitting at the edge of the bed, and he stood just in time to zip her up.
After throwing on some jewelry and stepping into a pair of black heels, she was ready and clicked her way into the living room where her wine remained on the coffee table.
She stole a few sips as she brought the glass into the kitchen and by the time she returned, Scott was ready and waiting in his tuxedo jacket.
“Let’s do this before I lose my nerve,” he said, and she smiled.
She kissed Josie goodbye
and reminded Maxwell that they’d be home by midnight if not sooner.
“You want Dean to get re-elected, don’t you?” she asked as they drove through the center of town, heading east. “I mean, a new mayor would bring new rules that might affect the precinct.”
“You’re right,” he told her. “Dean’s a good mayor. He gets along with the precinct and never meddles in our investigations, which I appreciate. And no, I wouldn’t want a new mayor coming in and shaking things up. But these hoity-toity functions drive me nuts. How does Dean Wentworth even know a guy like Hans Geoffrey?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But then again, I don’t really understand how some aspects of politics work. I’ve got to hand it to Dean, though. He’s made friends with some very wealthy and powerful people. He’ll have more than enough money to campaign against Celia Demblowski.”
That was the real problem—Dean had a contender and, unfortunately, a lot of people liked Celia. Though she had a spotty employment history, no one around town seemed to mind that Celia was radically under-qualified. She’d been a housewife while married to the late Ken Johnson, and later married Eric Demblowski, who had run the Rock Ridge Tribune before being arrested on conspiracy charges some years back.
Her campaign was centered on Dean’s failures, and she had been consistently disregarding all the good he’d done as mayor. The residents of Rock Ridge had gotten their hopes up concerning Dean’s amusement park, but the reality was that the park hadn’t brought in even a fraction of the money that Dean had promised. In retaliation, Dean had been digging up dirt on Celia, and in Kate’s opinion, things had been getting ugly because of it.
Kate pulled her truck up to the mansion gate and rolled down the window. “Scott and Kate York,” she told the guard, who found their names on the guest list, checked them off, and opened the gate, mentioning, “Pull up to the entrance and the valet will handle parking your truck.”
As Kate stepped on the accelerator, rolling through, Scott complained, “You’re going to let a kid park your truck?”
She shrugged, though she, too, wasn’t pleased. “What choice do we have?”
When she pulled up to the entrance, she threw her truck into Park and hopped out. The valet, a teenaged boy wearing a crimson vest and black slacks, took her keys and climbed in.
“Ready?” she asked Scott, taking his arm.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he grumbled, and they set off into the mansion.
As they crossed through the grand foyer, they were met with clusters of guests. A waiter carrying a tray of champagne weaved through the crowd and as he passed them, Scott plucked two flutes from the tray and handed one to Kate.
They made their gradual way into the ballroom, and Kate was surprised at the turn out. The room was filled with people dressed in tuxedos and gowns. There was a podium beside the French doors and a large banner boasting, “Dean Wentworth for Mayor, Six Years Strong!”
They wove their way in deeper until they found a good spot set off to the wayside from the bar at the back of the ballroom.
“Kate! Scott!”
It was Jessica, Dean’s wife. She wove through the crowd and reached them, lifting her champagne flute and smiling.
“To Dean,” she said. She was wearing a bright purple gown and her hair was done up in a tight French bun. “This mansion is unreal,” she went on. “Kate, I can’t believe you helped build it.”
“I can’t believe we built it in two months,” she said.
“Oh! You haven’t met Hans, have you?”
“I didn’t think he’d entered the country until a few hours ago,” said Kate.
“That’s true, but he’s been to Rock Ridge a handful of times. He once stayed at Over the Moon before it was leveled.”
Before Kate could respond, Jessica whirled off, calling out Hans’ name and then returned moments later with a tall, forty-year-old man with salt and pepper hair. He looked fit and lean in his tuxedo and as soon as he saw Kate, he lowered his big, blue eyes down at her, which at first seemed polite, until his gaze then traveled the length of her.
Scott wasn’t happy.
“Hans Geoffrey,” said Jessica, “this is Kate Flaherty and her husband, Scott York.”
As Jessica stammered to correct herself—“I mean Kate York”—Hans didn’t miss a beat. His rugged mouth curled into a leering smile as he held Kate’s hand in what no longer felt like a handshake, and he said in a deep, smoldering voice, “Kate Flaherty, you lent a hand in building my home.”
“I did,” said Kate politely as she reclaimed her hand. “And it’s York.”
“Of course,” he said easily before shaking Scott’s hand. “Chief, I appreciate your service to this community.”
“You’re welcome,” he mumbled.
Hans returned his gaze to Kate and seemed to drink in the sight of her, which made her very uncomfortable. Jessica was chattering on about Hans’ generous contribution to the campaign, but the billionaire didn’t appear to be paying attention to anyone but the handywoman.
Desperate to extricate herself, Kate said, “Excuse me,” and then whispered to Scott, “Ladies’ room.”
She then trailed through the ballroom, feeling Hans’ blue eyes burning into the back of her head until she reached the marble corridor. She let out a sigh of relief. That guy had some nerve, she thought. He’d practically hit on her with her husband standing right there, and she didn’t appreciate it.
Quickly, she walked toward one of the first floor bathrooms but as she came to a side room, she heard a woman shriek from within.
“Oh God!”
Kate recognized that voice. It was Marcy Clapton, the event coordinator, and when Kate rushed into the room—vaguely aware it was where the coat-check girl had stowed everyone’s coats—she couldn’t believe the sight she saw.
Chapter Two
In the coatroom, Marcy was standing at the foot of the bed with her profile to Kate and staring down at a heap of coats. Her eyes were wide and her mouth open.
It wasn’t just a heap of coats on the bed.
Reeling with confusion, Kate managed to pick out a woman’s leg, an arm, and a mess of brown curls spilling over the jackets.
It was a woman.
And she was dead.
Marcy whipped around, perhaps sensing she was no longer alone, and blurted out, “I didn’t do it!”
Kate neared the body, getting a better sense of what the dead woman looked like. She was dressed in a slinky, black dress, though it was too short to really be appropriate for a black-tie event. Her eyelashes were long and fake, and her lips were painted bright red. But to Kate there was no clear sign of how she’d died. There was no bruising on her face, no contusions on her skull, no blood anywhere, yet she didn’t look a day over twenty.
Inching closer, she examined the woman’s arms and legs without touching her. One of her high heels was missing, and when Kate looked at the other foot she noticed that the left heel was on it—the wrong shoe.
She hadn’t been strangled or shot or stabbed.
“What do we do?” Marcy asked her in a panic. “This can’t get out. No one can know.”
“Are you crazy?”
“What? No!”
“Are you suggesting you want to dispose of the body without anyone knowing?”
Marcy shrunk, slumping her shoulders in shame, and Kate shook her head, appalled.
“My husband is the Police Chief,” she said confidently. “I’ll get him in here.”
“No!” said Marcy, rushing to her and taking hold of her hand before she could reach into her purse for her cell phone. “I need a minute to think.”
“There’s nothing to think about,” said Kate, eyeing her closely. After a long moment, she asked, “Do you know what happened?”
“No!” she blurted out, but Kate didn’t believe her. “I told you, I had nothing to do with this.”
Marcy fell silent, and again Kate sensed she knew a heck of a lot more than she was saying.
“Who is she?” Kate asked.
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea?” she challenged, cuing up Scott’s number in her cell phone. “You’re the event coordinator. You managed the guest list.”
“It’s a long list!”
Kate pressed her cell to her ear and as soon as she heard Scott on the other end, she said, “I need you to come to the coat room. It’s down the corridor and just shy of the bathroom.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Affording Marcy a shred of respect, she said, “Just come quickly. It might be best if you don’t make a scene.”
Marcy looked relieved to hear her say that, but Kate knew better. This entire mansion was about to be turned upside down as a crime scene.
As they waited for Scott, Kate asked, “What were you doing in here?”
“Huh?”
“I said: why did you come into the coat room?”
“I had to make a personal call and wanted privacy,” she said, but the way her tone had wavered struck Kate as a boldfaced lie.
“Who did you hire as coat-check girls?”
Marcy furrowed her brow, saying, “I don’t have to tell you that. I don’t have to tell you anything!”
“But you will have to tell the police, Marcy,” she said, shifting her tone. “I found you with a dead body. The police are going to think you did this. It would be in your best interest to tell me everything you know.”
“Tell you?” she challenged, folding her arms.
Before Kate could press her further, Scott stepped into the room. His gaze snapped from Kate to Marcy and finally to the dead woman on the bed. His cell phone was in his hand in an instant and, interestingly, Marcy didn’t demand that he not call the police like she had when Kate had arrived.
He neared the body and pressed his fingertips to the dead woman’s throat. “Hey, I’m going to need a medical examiner and an ambulance at the mansion,” he explained into his cell phone.
“She’s alive?” asked Marcy, in shock.
She didn’t sound relieved so much as terrified.
Kate calmed her anyway, quietly mentioning, “To transport her to the morgue.”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 132