Reindeer Roundup (A Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery Book 27)

by Kathi Daley

  “I’m sure. Why would you think otherwise?”

  “You never call me just to chat.”

  I supposed Mom had a point. I wasn’t good about calling just to say hi, and we saw each other fairly often. “I just wanted to firm up our plans for Christmas. It’s only a few days away.”

  I could almost feel Mom relax. “Of course. I guess we do need to get organized. Initially, we talked about having Christmas Eve at your place and Christmas dinner here. Are you still up for that? I can do both here if it would be easier for you.”

  “No, I still want to do Christmas Eve dinner. Zak should be home by Saturday and Ellie is here to help with the cooking. With Grandpa and Hazel, I guess we’ll have thirteen.”

  “That sounds right. How’s Zak’s mom doing?”

  “Zak’s getting her settled at Clara’s today. If all goes well, he’ll try to come home tomorrow. It’ll be late and he’ll be exhausted by the time he gets here, but at least he’ll be home.”

  “I’m sure he’s as anxious to get home to you as you are to have him home.”

  I looked out the window at the Christmas wonderland Zak had set up in the yard earlier in the month. It looked extra pretty with the fresh snow on it. Too bad he wasn’t here to enjoy it.

  “Dad and I are taking Harper to look at the windows tonight. You should come with us. Bring the kids. Levi and Ellie are welcome too, if they’d like.”

  “I guess Christmas has sort of snuck up on me. I’d like to look at the windows. Hometown Christmas starts tomorrow, and the streets will be packed. It probably would be best to go tonight.”

  “Great. I’ll make us a reservation for dinner as well.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll text Ellie to make sure they want to go and then get back to you to let you know.”

  I hung up the house phone and picked up my cell. There was a message letting me know I had an email. I clicked over to the email account I’d set up through the dating site and found an email to Marilyn from a man who identified himself as Interested. He said he’d like to get to know me better and gave me the internet address of a chat room where he wanted to meet.

  Okay, that was odd. How did he get my email address? It was supposed to be private until I authorized the dating site to share it with a potential date. I was going to delete the email but decided to wait and show it to Salinger.

  ******

  Salinger frowned as he looked at the email. “You think this was sent by the same person who sent the emails to Stella?”

  “I don’t know. I could ask Alex to run a trace, but I don’t want to scare her. There’s a good possibility it was sent by someone else entirely.”

  “I thought you were going to stay on the sidelines with this one.”

  I flinched just a bit at the angry tone in Salinger’s voice. “I am on the sidelines. I never even left my house. I just thought if I set up a dummy account I might be able to get a feeling for the type of man Stella was dating. I hoped I might even be able to strike up conversations with a few of them.”

  “You realize that if the man who killed Stella somehow hacked into her account at the dating site to get her email and then traced it back to an address, there could be a killer out there who knows where you live? Or at least where Marilyn lives.”

  “The hacker won’t trace the email back to me. Stella didn’t have the security system on her computer that Zak has installed on ours. If the person who sent the email tries to trace it back to a physical location he won’t get far.”

  “I hope you’re right, but I don’t like this one bit. We need to trace not only this email but the ones sent to Stella. And we need to figure out who DMG is.”

  “I’ll call Alex and tell her to meet us at the house. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope so.” Salinger shook his head, then leaned back in the booth. I could see he was stressed, and I was sorry to have been the cause of it, when I’d had only good intentions.

  “I’m sorry. I really am. But maybe we should look at this as a positive. We managed to smoke out someone who could very well be the killer. Maybe if I respond he’ll send another email. The more information we get, the better the chance of figuring out who murdered Stella.”

  I waited for Salinger to disagree, but he didn’t. But he didn’t agree either. All he did was sit across from me and glare, though at least he wasn’t yelling or threatening to lock me in a jail cell.

  “Look,” I said after a minute of awkward silence, “I screwed up. I’m sorry. I want to help, but from this point forward I’ll let you make all the calls. I’ll be available for brainstorming, but other than that I’ll stay out of it.”

  Salinger still didn’t speak, but I could tell he was listening.

  “The person who sent the email will never know Marilyn and I are the same person,” I tried to reassure him. “I was careful. I not only used a fake name and profile photo but the hobbies and whatnot I posted are very general. There’s nothing that in any way links Marilyn to me. It’ll be okay.”

  Salinger sat forward and looked me in the eye. “So, you set up an email address through the dating site that you don’t use for anything else?”

  “Correct. It’s registered to Marilyn M. I used a fake phone number and it didn’t ask for a physical address.”

  “And you’re sure the hacker who managed to retrieve the information can’t trace it to the computer in your house?”

  “I’m sure. No one is better at hacking than Zak, which means no one knows how to set up a security system better than he does. Our system is unhackable.”

  “I guess that makes me feel a little better. And you made a good point about using Marilyn to smoke out the person who sent the emails to Stella.”

  We stopped talking as the waitress delivered our lunch. We began to eat before resuming our conversation.

  “Tell me everything that’s happened since you set up the fake profile,” Salinger said.

  “Not a lot. I chatted with Ron P, which is how I found out where he worked. After I logged off I got busy and never logged back on. When I checked the site this morning I had over a hundred messages. I figured that was too many to weed through, so I declined them all. Shortly after that I received the email.”

  Salinger leaned his elbows on the table. “It sounds like we could be on to something with the idea that the person we’re looking for may not be one of the seven men Stella dated but one she rejected right off the bat.”

  “That would be my take on things.”

  “Okay. Let’s script a reply email to Interested and then head over to the liquor store Stella checked in at just hours before she died. Maybe she was with someone, and if we’re lucky a clerk will remember who it was, or the store will have surveillance cameras.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. I loved the fact that Salinger was treating me like a partner. I knew his motivation was to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t get into any trouble while Zak was away, but I was enjoying the give and take the two of us were engaged in.

  We decided we’d arrange for a face-to-face meeting with Interested. He’d show up and question the guy about the email and the fact that he seemed to have access to an email that should have been secure, while I waited safely out of the spotlight at home. We sent off the email and headed to the liquor store while we waited for a reply. With any luck, we’d have Stella’s killer identified by the end of the day.

  The liquor store where Stella had checked in the night she died was located on the outskirts of town. Salinger wanted me to wait in the car while he spoke to the clerk, which didn’t sit well with me, but I knew if I didn’t do as he said he’d most likely just drop me at home with instructions to stay put. Not wanting to sit home by myself, the best thing to do was to go along with Salinger’s plan.

  Feeling the need to do something with my time, I checked my emails while I waited for Salinger. There were several emails from online shopping outlets I frequented, as well as some e-cards from friends wishing
me a merry Christmas. I scanned past an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party as well as an online statement from the billing department at the hospital where I’d sent in a deposit for Catherine’s birth. I was about to log off and check my Facebook page when a new email came through from Interested. He wanted to meet in a chat room so we could get to know each other, providing a link and asking me to join him there in two hours. I replied, saying I was anxious to get to know him as well. I logged off my email and was about to access Facebook when I saw Salinger leave the store.

  “So?” I asked the minute he opened his door and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “The clerk said he didn’t work that night, so he couldn’t verify that Stella was in, but he confirmed she was a frequent customer.”

  “This store is pretty far from both her place of employment and her apartment. It seems there’d be more convenient stores from which to buy her alcohol.”

  “She may have been coming here for another reason,” Salinger suggested. “Maybe a friend lives nearby.”

  “Maybe. Based on her log, she checked in at the truck stop out on the highway an hour before she stopped at the liquor store. Stella must have been at the truck stop for some reason, then stopped here on her way home.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “Does the store have a surveillance system?”

  “It does, but the tapes are rewritten every third day, so the tape from the night Stella died is gone. The clerk gave me the phone number for the one who was working last Friday night. I’ll see if he remembers seeing Stella. In the meantime, let’s head over to the truck stop. Stella might have been there to buy gas, but if she went directly to the liquor store she must have gone into the restaurant. The truck stop and the liquor store are a five-minute drive apart; she had to have done something else in the hour between the check-ins.”

  “Maybe she met someone there,” I suggested. “The bartender at Lucky’s said Stella’s phone dinged, she looked at it, and then left. We know she checked into Lucky’s at six fifty-two. We don’t know how long she stayed, but given her history of spending a lot of time there it seems reasonable she might have still been at Lucky’s at around ten, when she received the message and left.”

  Salinger turned the key in the ignition and started the car. We didn’t speak during the short drive, but when we arrived at the truck stop he once again instructed me to wait in the car. I wasn’t thrilled to be left behind again but did as I was told.

  I took out my phone and was about to check Facebook when I noticed someone walking out of the restaurant: a man who wore a blue uniform and looked like an employee. I watched as he smoked a cigarette and spoke on his phone. I was too far away to make out what he was saying, but he appeared to be having a casual conversation. I watched him toss his cigarette to the ground and stamp it out with his foot. Then he glanced at his watch and looked out at the highway. I had the sense he was about to head back inside when a dark sedan pulled into the lot and up to one of the gas pumps. The driver got out of his car and began to pump his gas. The man I’d been watching walked over to him and said a few words. The driver handed the guy what looked like a wad of money, and the restaurant employee pulled an envelope out of his pocket. He handed it to the driver, who glanced inside the envelope and nodded, and the man in the blue uniform walked away.

  Chapter 8

  “I’m almost positive I just saw a drug deal go down,” I said to Salinger when he returned.

  Salinger frowned. “A drug deal?”

  “I saw a man in a blue uniform come out of the door to the restaurant and minimart,” I began, and then explained everything I’d seen.

  “I remember seeing the guy you’re describing going in as I was coming out. Wait here. I’m going to see if I can track him down.”

  Great. It looked like I was back to waiting. I decided to call Jeremy to get an update on the reindeer situation. As of the end of the day yesterday there’d been just one reindeer left to find and return to the pen. I hoped he’d be able to manage that today; he was going out of town tomorrow and I wanted all the reindeer tucked back in before he left.

  “Hey, Tiffany, it’s Zoe,” I said when she answered the phone at the Zoo.

  “Zoe, how are you? How’s the baby?”

  “We’re both fine. I’m looking for Jeremy. Is he around?”

  “Yeah, hang on. I’ll get him.”

  I listened to the carols that played while I was on hold. I couldn’t believe it was only a few days until Christmas. Not only did I not feel ready, but somehow, I felt like the joy and fun of the season was slipping through my fingers. Hopefully, once Salinger and I solved this case and Zak got home the Christmassy feeling I’d enjoyed earlier in the month would return.

  “Hey, Zoe; what’s up?” Jeremy asked when he came on the line.

  “I just wanted to see how we’re doing with the last reindeer.”

  “I’m afraid Dasher is a tricky fellow. There’ve been a lot of sightings, but by the time we arrive at the location of the sighting the dude is gone. Based on the location of the sightings, it seemed he was on his way out of town, but then turned around and was heading back this way. Tank and Gunnar are on patrol and I’m hoping to return him to the pen by nightfall.”

  “Yeah, that would be ideal. Zak should be home sometime tomorrow and I’d like to have all the reindeer tucked back in before he gets here.”

  “We’ll get him. I don’t want you to worry about it at all. I know you’ve been helping Salinger, so just focus on the sleuthing and leave the reindeer roundup to me.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d call doing what I’d been doing today sleuthing, but it beat the heck out of sitting home and relaxing, as everyone seemed to think I should be doing. As I’ve said on more than one occasion in recent days, sitting around and relaxing was for the birds.

  “Okay, here’s what I found out just now,” Salinger said as he got back into the car. “The guy you saw works in the maintenance department at the truck stop. His name is David Gardner and he confirmed he knew Stella from when she stopped by for gas once a week, and they’d chat while she filled up her tank. I asked if she was in late last Friday and he said he worked the late shift but didn’t remember seeing her.”

  “Why would Stella come all the way out here for gas when she lives and works in town, unless her real intention was to hook up with someone? Didn’t her neighbor say she was seen heading out on a date with someone named David?”

  “You’re right, the neighbor did say that. Of course, David’s a common name. I asked about the exchange you witnessed, and David said he’d picked up a video game for a friend and had arranged to get it to him and collect the money due him when he stopped for gas. There’s no way to prove or disprove that, but I’m putting him on the suspect list.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  “I’m going back to the office to make a few calls. I’ll drop you back at home on the way.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: I have a date to meet Interested in a chat room at four. Do you want me to handle it myself?”

  “No. I’ll come over to your place for the chat. I think we need to try to get him to commit to a meeting. When I’m face-to-face with him I can find out exactly how he’s able to do what he’s doing and whether he’s a viable suspect in the murder investigation.”

  Ellie and Alex were in the kitchen making cookies when I got home. I poured myself a glass of milk, grabbed a couple of cookies, and sat down at the table. “How was shopping?” I asked.

  “It was fun,” Alex responded. “Eli loves all the bright lights and decorations. I love to see his eyes light up every time he spies something new.”

  “I talked to my mom this morning; she wants all of us to go into town together this evening to look at the windows and she’s making a reservation for dinner. I was thinking around six. Do you think Levi and Scooter will be done by then?”

  “The second shift is supposed to relieve Levi at five. I’ll text him to let him know
we’re going out so he won’t dawdle.”

  “Okay, great, I’ll tell Mom we’re on.”

  “It’s too bad Zak isn’t here,” Alex commented. “He loves the windows.”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t help but feel a little sad.

  “Scooter will want to bring Tucker,” Alex said. “In fact, he’s planning to ask if he can spend the night. If you’re okay with that you should include him as well.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine with it. I’ll text him about what we’re doing.”

  “Maybe you should take a nap in the meantime,” Ellie suggested.

  “I can’t. I need to clean up and then I have a date in a Sexy Singles chat room at four.”

  Ellie gave me the oddest look, though she didn’t respond. I was sure she was struggling for something to say.

  “Salinger will be here at around three forty-five. He’ll be coming along on the date.”

  “This has to do with the case you’re working on?” Ellie said.

  “Of course. Did you think I really had a date in a singles chat room?”

  “Well, no, but…oh, never mind. If I see Salinger pull up I’ll send him into the office.”

  I looked at Alex. “We might be able to use your help if you’re game.”

  “Sure. Just let me know what you need me to do.”

  ******

  Salinger arrived at five minutes to four. I logged on to the computer, then followed the link Interested had provided to the chat room. Once there, I waited for him to make his appearance. At exactly four o’clock he logged on.

  The conversation started off with him asking me about myself. I was careful to give answers that might persuade him to want to meet me while not giving away anything that might lead to my real identity. Alex had logged on to Zak’s computer and was attempting to trace the location of the computer Interested was using.

  “He’s on a phone,” Alex said after a few minutes, “registered to Roseanne Candlewood.”

  “Interested is female?” I asked.