PRAISE FOR
A Crafty Killing
(Best of 2011 by Suspense Magazine)
“Fun plot, fanciful characters, really fabulous crafts . . . Bartlett put her art and soul into this mystery!”
—Laura Childs, New York Times bestselling author of Scones & Bones
“Bartlett combines murder, a touch of romance, and a lot of intrigue in this charming story. With a cast of personable characters and a lively, fast-paced story line, readers will be enthralled and delighted with this fresh new series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“A fun new mystery with a cast of charming characters . . . Readers will look forward to more with Katie and the artisans from Artisans Alley.”
—The Mystery Reader
“A sweet new mystery series by a top-notch author who writes under a few pen names. Katie is a likable heroine, fallible yet strong, tough but tender. A great book for readers looking for something light—and who also look for happy endings. I expect this series to go on for a long time.”
—Cozy Library
“[A] fantastic start to a new cozy series . . . A Crafty Killing kept my attention from the very first word until I turned the last page. The red herrings were aplenty, and the killer a complete surprise. Ms. Bartlett has created a crafty tale that must be read.”
—The Best Reviews
“This opening tale in a small-town amateur-sleuth series is a terrific first act.”
—Genre Go Round
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Lorraine Bartlett
A CRAFTY KILLING
THE WALLED FLOWER
The Walled Flower
LORRAINE BARTLETT
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reaction to the recipes contained in this book.
THE WALLED FLOWER
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Lorraine Bartlett.
Cover illustration by Chris Beatrice.
Cover design by Annette Fiore Defex.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
EISBN: 9781101560181
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
For my dear friends
Leann Sweeney and Jennifer Stanley
Acknowledgments
Welcome back to lovely Victoria Square in the village of McKinlay Mill, New York. I had such fun writing The Walled Flower, and had lots of input from my wonderful critique partners and first readers who entered the story at various points in its creation. My thanks go to Gwen Nelson and Liz Eng; Sandra Parshall, Krista Davis, Avery Aames, and Janet Bolin; as well as to Janette McNana and readers of the 13th Precinct.
Thanks also go to my wonderful editor, Tom Colgan, and the world’s best agent, Jessica Faust. Most of all I’d like to thank my husband, Frank, who supports me in everything I do.
To learn more about the series, I hope you’ll visit my website, www.LorraineBartlett.com, and will consider signing up for my periodically e-mailed newsletter.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
One
Steam seeped through the airholes in the Angelo’s pizza box, along with the aroma of melted mozzarella, pepperoni, sauce, and spices. Katie Bonner clutched the twenty-first-century equivalent of “cake on a plate” that housewives once brought to welcome new neighbors and approached the Webster mansion on the east end of Victoria Square. The day was cool, bright, and beautiful. Perfect weather for early spring in Western New York, but Katie felt anything but cheerful, despite her mission to welcome the newcomers.
She opened the sagging gate and stepped into the small front courtyard, which was littered with rocks, weeds, and remains of rusty old garden urns. As she mounted the rather rickety wooden steps, Katie noticed the mansion’s heavy oak door stood ajar. Katie paused in the doorway, squinting into the darkened interior. Yup, it was definitely ocupado. Using her elbow, she knocked on the doorjamb, its blistered, peeling paint just another job awaiting completion on the list of renovation and restoration that was taking place at what was soon to be an upscale bed-and-breakfast.
“Anybody hungry?” Katie called.
A dirt-smudged face appeared around the door. Dusty blond bangs hung over a pair of light blue e
yes. More wisps had escaped the faded red bandana that was supposed to protect the rest of the woman’s hair. Clad in a grubby T-shirt and jeans, she held a claw hammer in one hand, the knuckles on her other hand oozing blood.
“Pizza?” the woman said hopefully.
“The best,” Katie assured her, proffering the box. “Where can I set it down?”
“On any flat surface you can find.”
Katie entered and stepped over a fallen two-by-four, tracking through plaster dust to set the box on a makeshift table of boards on sawhorses. “Do you need a Band-Aid?”
The woman sucked at the abrasion. “Not for this.”
“Janice,” came a male voice from the room beyond.
Katie glanced in that direction. The owner of the voice, a dark-haired man in his late thirties, stepped through the doorway, just as dirty as his counterpart. Not surprising in the ruin of what, one hundred years before, had been a lovely home.
“Hi, I’m Katie Bonner. I manage Artisans Alley on the other end of the Square, and I’m president of the Victoria Square Merchants Association. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks,” the man said and moved to stand by the woman.
“I’ve seen you working here for the last couple of days and figured you might need a break,” Katie said.
“Do we ever.” The woman moved closer, setting the hammer down and offering Katie her hand. “Janice Ryan. And this is my husband, Toby.”
Katie shook both their hands, then pulled a sheaf of paper napkins from the back pocket of her jeans. “Please, help yourself.”
“Thanks,” the couple chorused, and each dove for a slice.
Katie took a long look around the cavernous space. Bare studs gave the room a skeletal look. Lath and chunks of plaster from the ceiling filled plastic buckets, waiting to be emptied into the commercial Dumpster out back. A bare lightbulb hung from a cheap 1960s fixture. That, too, would eventually have to go.
“Wow, I can’t believe how much you’ve already accomplished,” Katie said.
Janice swallowed, her mouth flattening into a frown. “Sounds like you’ve been in here before.”
Many times, Katie was tempted to blurt. She and her late husband, Chad, had tramped through the cold, uninviting place on dozens of occasions during the four years they’d saved to buy it. Then Chad had impulsively invested instead in Artisans Alley, a going concern quickly going downhill. Chad had passed away the year before—the victim of a car accident—and Katie was now the owner and manager. So far she hadn’t made a nickel of the money back either.
“Once or twice,” Katie said, forcing a smile. “What are your plans?”
Janice beamed. “We hope to open the Grand Victoria Inn in about three months.”
A very ambitious plan, considering the state the building was currently in.
“We’ll have seven guest rooms to start. The property comes with plenty of acreage to add guest cottages if we do well.”
Katie had planned an extensive garden refit, perfect for outdoor weddings and corporate picnics. And if the weather didn’t cooperate, she figured she could always tent such affairs. And she’d wanted a white-painted gazebo at the far end of the yard, flanked by a lovely cottage garden, with lots of pink and white cosmos.
Janice’s eyes glowed with pride. “The entryway will be totally restored,” she said, taking in the space with a sweep of her hand. “As you can see, we’ve just got that wall over there to remove. They divided the place into apartments, but that’s good in a way, because we won’t have to replumb the whole house for the guest rooms.”
That was one of the things Katie had counted on, too. Her plan had been to renovate the old mansion and open the English Ivy Inn. Chad was to be the host, and Katie would manage the kitchen and the financial end of things. It was a solid plan. It was her life’s dream. And now it was forever out of her reach.
“Toby’s good at carpentry and has plans for a lovely oak check-in desk, over here,” Janice said with a wave of her hand. “We’ve got wood salvaged from another site that’ll be just perfect.”
Katie already had a lovely oak reception desk sitting in a storage unit waiting to be stripped and refinished. She’d collected brass headboards, Oriental carpets, dressers and nightstands, pedestal sinks, light fixtures, dishes, and silverware, too. Every month she wrote out a check to keep her treasures warehoused, and every month she debated getting rid of it all. Owning all that stuff was just another painful reminder that life wasn’t always fair.
Katie’s anger flared as she noted the sledgehammer resting against the wall. “Are you doing all the work yourself?”
“Just the preliminary demolition,” Toby said, reaching for another pizza slice. “It’ll save us three or four grand that we can better use elsewhere.”
“There’s a certain satisfaction in taking down a wall, especially when you can already visualize how perfect the space will be,” Janice said. She laughed. “I’ve spent the last few months decorating this house in my mind. I can’t wait until opening day when I can show it off to the world.”
Katie, too, had imagined exactly how she’d renovate the old house. Replacement newel posts for the staircase, frosted glass sconces on the walls, delicate rose-patterned wallpaper, chair rails and crown molding. For years she’d longed to swing a sledge and take out an extraneous wall or two.
She picked up and hefted the tool, nearly staggering under its weight. “Would you mind if I took a whack at that wall—just for fun?”
“Go for it,” Toby said, grinning. He put down his pizza, grabbed a pair of work gloves, and accompanied Katie to the wall.
“I’d better cover the pizza,” Janice said.
“We’re taking down the plasterboard first, then we’ll yank out the studs. It’s not a load-bearing wall,” Toby said, handing Katie the gloves and a pair of safety glasses.
That she already knew. Many an evening she’d pored over how-to books in anticipation of applying her own brand of sweat equity to the place.
Toby or Janice had already removed the baseboard molding at the bottom of the wall, leaving a three-inch gap that had never seen a coat of paint. An odd, gummy dark stain marred the middle of that section of pristine plasterboard.
Katie donned the gloves and glasses, grasped the sledge firmly, swung it high, and let its weight slam against the wall. Bang! A circular dimple marred the surface, but not enough to make a break in the drywall.
“Put your weight into it,” Toby encouraged with a smile.
Clenching her teeth, Katie hauled off and swung again.
Bang!
The anger blossomed inside her, threatening to engulf her.
This should have been her house!
Bang!
It would have been hers if Chad hadn’t invested—without her knowledge—in that money pit, Artisans Alley.
Bang!
The sledge careened through the air, smacking hard into the wall, taking a jagged hunk of plasterboard with it.
Katie swung again and again, her biceps complaining at the strain. Clouds of dust swirled in the air.
Hands on hips, Toby watched from her left. “You’re doing great, Katie.” He didn’t sound as pleased as he had a few moments before.
Katie took another mighty swing, sending a fragment of plasterboard flying. She paused to yank a loose piece from the studs.
Janice gasped behind her.
Katie lost her grip on the sledge, nearly crushing her toes. She turned to see what Janice was fussing about.
Openmouthed and panting, a wide-eyed Janice frantically pointed at the gaping hole in the wall.
Confused, Katie turned to see the source of her distress.
Behind a heavy layer of plastic, empty eye sockets gazed at nothing; the jaw hung open as though in a scream. The remains of long blonde hair were suspended like Easter grass among the bones, and a shiny silver locket dangled from the proximity of its neck.
Katie swallowed, her mouth going dry. “Well, this
could ruin your day.”
Yellow crime tape barred the mansion’s entrance. The east end of the Victoria Square parking lot was clogged with squad cars scattered with no regard to the orderly lines painted on the asphalt. Katie leaned against a paint-flaked column on the wide veranda, noting the rain damage at its base. It would be expensive to replace.
“This is a bad omen,” Katie heard Janice complain for the hundredth time from inside the house. “Who’ll want to come to the inn knowing we found a body in a wall?”
The poor woman had no concept of marketing, Katie thought with a rueful shake of her head. A ghost was a great draw . . . if you had a good story to go with it.
She’d been glad to escape the crowd inside. As a material witness, Katie was compelled to stay until the law said she could leave. She glanced at her watch. It was going on two hours now.
She sighed, unsure why she hadn’t felt as shattered as Janice and Toby at finding a skeleton walled up in what once might’ve been her home. Maybe because it wasn’t her home and never would be. Then again, she’d seen Artisans Alley’s former owner/manager dead in a puddle of his own blood. She’d found one of the vendors dead with a broken neck from a fall. An anonymous skeleton wasn’t half as scary. Or maybe she was just in denial. But it was obvious the person behind the wall had been dead a long—well, reasonably speaking—time, and it sure hadn’t been an accident.
A crowd of rubberneckers ringed the cordoned-off area. Katie looked up to see her friend and Artisans Alley vendor, Rose Nash, among the crowd, clutching a card or paper, madly waving to her, trying to get her attention. Dyed blonde curls bobbed around her anxious, wrinkled face. Katie took a step forward, but a hand on her shoulder made her turn.
Detective Ray Davenport of the Sheriff’s Office homicide detail was once again on-site, looking just as formidable and bad-tempered as the other times Katie had interacted with him.
“You seem to attract death, Mrs. Bonner,” the balding, middle-aged cop said.
The Walleld Flower Page 1