Death to the Highest Bidder: A Jill Andrews Cozy Mystery #2

by Nicole Ellis

  “You’re being silly. We’re not spying. We’re simply making sure she isn’t here before we leave the casserole on her front doorstep. After all, a stray dog could get into the food, and then she wouldn’t have dinner. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” She somehow managed to say it all without giggling.

  I rolled my eyes at her. “I doubt she’s in danger of starving. I’m sure she has friends and other relatives who have brought her food.”

  “But I spent an hour on this lasagna. I want to make sure she gets it. Oh, and by the way, if Tomàs asks, giving a grieving widow a casserole is the only reason we’re here. He found me putting it in the oven, and I had to tell him I was taking it to Sandy. He was rather disappointed that we weren’t going to be eating it for dinner and seemed suspicious about our intentions.” Desi knocked on the door again. Nobody answered.

  I had an eerie flashback to knocking on Louis Mahoney’s office door and what I’d found in there. I stared at the door.

  “What if she’s dead in there?” My imagination was working overtime, and I didn’t like where it was going.

  “Seriously?” Desi balanced the lasagna on one hand and cupped her hand over her eyes, pressing her face to the window again. “The lights are off, and I don’t see anyone in there. I don’t think she’s lying dead on the floor.”

  “Maybe we should check to make sure.” I bit my lip and stared at the door.

  “How? I’m sure the door is locked.” She turned the knob for emphasis, but the door didn’t give.

  “Maybe a back door?” I walked toward the side of the house and spotted one on the garage.

  Desi followed me, gripping the lasagna pan tightly. I turned the knob on the garage side door and it opened easily. With any luck, the door to the inside of the house wouldn’t be locked either.

  “We’re in.” I pushed the door open, unsure of what I’d find in the garage.

  Luckily, there was no body in the garage, but it was as cold as a morgue. It looked like this was Sandy’s workshop for a florist business. A refrigerated case held cut flowers in clear plastic vases and flower stems and ribbon were strewn across a rough wooden table. Another, much cleaner, table held ornate bows, ready to be wrapped around floral arrangements. I walked to the refrigerator and took a closer look at the formally arranged flowers. The composition was beautiful. Sandy had talent. I spotted a mousetrap in the corner and shivered. More than anything in the world, I hated mice. I’d almost rather discover another body than come across a mouse.

  “Sandy?” I called out, my voice echoing off the cement floor and empty walls of the garage. Desi went around me and opened the door into the house. We stood on the threshold, exchanging glances. Entering someone’s house felt like more of a violation of privacy than going in their unlocked garage. “Should we go in?”

  “We’re concerned about her, right?” A pit formed in my stomach, as if we were entering another realm.

  “I guess.” She stepped into the house, and I followed.

  The house itself was much warmer than the garage. Sandy’s body wasn’t visible, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure if I’d expected to actually find her dead, but I was happy that the house was empty, especially since we were now trespassing for no reason.

  Desi made a quick tour of the ranch-style home, her footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors as she disappeared down the long hallway. She returned and set the lasagna pan on the counter.

  “I don’t think anyone’s home.” She gestured to the food. “Should I leave this here or take it outside?”

  “Outside. I don’t want her to know we came in.” Now that my fear of finding a body was unfounded, I allowed myself to assess the house. The furnishings were as fancy as Louis’s office. The chef’s kitchen contained a double oven, a gas stove, and an overhead rack that held an assortment of expensive copper pots. A thick oriental rug covered the hardwood floors in the living room. Above a marble fireplace hung a giant television. “Someone spent a lot of money on this place.”

  “No kidding.” Desi walked over to an antique roll-top desk situated against the wall next to the kitchen and lifted some papers.

  “Desi! You can’t go through their stuff.” If we messed up her papers, Sandy would know for sure that someone had been inside her house.

  “I wanted to see this.” She held up a thin manila envelope.

  “What is it?” I crossed the thick rug to her, my feet sinking into the plush fibers with every step.

  “The return address is a private investigation firm in Seattle.”

  Our eyes met.

  “Is it sealed?” I really hoped not. What was Sandy doing with an envelope from a local PI firm?

  “Nope. It’s been opened.” Desi stuck her hand in the envelope and pulled out a handful of five-by-seven photographs. She flipped them around until they were right side up.

  I sucked in my breath. Each photo showed Louis with a different woman—each in a compromising position.

  “She knew,” I whispered.

  “Looks like it.” Desi looked closer at the first photo. “There’s one with him and Terri. And this one shows him and Brenda kissing.” She slid the third photo on top and lifted it closer to her face. I hoped it wasn’t Louis with Dorinda, although at this point, very little would surprise me. “I think I know this woman.”

  “Dorinda?” I crossed my fingers, hoping I was wrong.

  “No. Someone who comes into the café. She’s married to some high-tech hotshot. I know because she brings it up in every conversation I have with her.” She stabbed her finger at the photo. “I always think of her as the gold digger because she never passes up a chance to tell me how wealthy her husband is.”

  “How did he manage to juggle all these women at the same time? And his wife didn’t know.” I leaned in to take a closer look at the third woman, a petite woman with dark hair and flawless tan skin. She looked vaguely familiar, although I couldn’t place her.

  “Maybe she did know the whole time and just wanted proof.” Desi shrugged. “What we do know is she knew about this at least since”—she examined the postmark on the envelope— “Monday, June 4th.”

  “The day before her husband was killed.”

  “So the question is, was she mad enough to kill him?”

  We both realized at the same time that we were standing in the middle of the house of a woman who may have killed her husband. Someone who wouldn’t be happy to find out that we’d broken in and rifled through her belongings.

  “Put it back,” I urged. Desi stuffed the photos back into the manila envelope and artfully arranged it under some papers on the desk, hopefully exactly how she’d found it. She turned to leave and accidentally brushed against another envelope, causing the whole stack to crash to the ground.

  I stared at it in horror. “Desi!”

  “Oh, crud.” She scooped up the papers, holding them in her hands and staring at the mess. “How am I going to figure out what order these were in originally?”

  “I don’t know, but you’d better do it fast. She might be back any minute.” I cast frantic glances at the front door, expecting Sandy to burst through it at any time.

  Desi piled the papers on the desk, making sure the manila envelope from the PI was in the middle.

  She stood back and examined it with a critical eye. “Does that look about right?”

  “I have no clue,” I answered truthfully. I wished we’d never gone inside the house, or at the very least, that Desi hadn’t snooped through the desk.

  “Well, it’s going to have to do.” She carefully backed away from the desk, and we scurried out of the house through the garage door. In the car, we stared at each other.

  “Now what?” I asked. Our list of suspects kept growing. At this rate, there was no way Brenda would get to keep her kids.

  “I don’t know.” Desi rested her head on the steering wheel. “Maybe we should have taken Tomàs’s advice and stayed out of it.”

  I looked out
the window at Sandy’s front door. I felt as though we’d forgotten something. My stomach dropped to my shoes, and my eyes zeroed in on Desi. Her lap was empty.

  “Where’s the lasagna?”

  “Oh, crap.” Desi’s eyes bugged out. “In our hurry to get out of there, I must have left it on the counter.”

  We both got out of the car. “You have to go get it,” I urged.

  She took off to the side of the garage. When she was out of sight, I heard gravel crunch in the long driveway. Someone was coming. “Desi!” I shouted.

  No one answered. She must have already been in the house. What was I going to do when Sandy arrived?

  A black BMW pulled into the driveway. A woman’s leg appeared out the driver’s side, followed quickly by the rest of her. Sandy was home. Desi needed to get out of the house ASAP.

  I tried to lean nonchalantly against the side of Desi’s car and waved at her. Sandy gave me an odd look.

  “Jill, right?”

  I nodded and checked for Desi out of the corners of my eyes. Where was she? I was going to have to stall.

  “What are you doing here?” Sandy looked around the driveway. She went around to the back of her car and popped the trunk. It was full of paper bags and more florist supplies.

  “Uh, my sister-in-law and I wanted to bring you some lasagna. She’s a really great cook.”

  “Oh.” She still looked confused. “That’s nice of you. But where is it? And where is she?”

  I didn’t have a great answer for that as I truly didn’t know.

  “I think she saw an animal or something go around back. Desi’s an animal lover and loves to see them in their natural habitat.”

  Sandy opened her mouth as if to speak, but I cut her off before she could get the words out. “Here, let me help you with those groceries.” I approached the trunk of the car and grabbed one of the paper sacks.

  “Thanks,” she said with surprise. “I didn’t expect for anyone to be here. Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” She peered at the side of the house. “And your friend too?”

  I carried one of the paper sacks of groceries to the front door. “No, we wouldn’t want to trouble you. After Desi gets back with the lasagna, we both need to get back to work.”

  “Oh, ok.” She sounded sad. I picked up another bag from the car.

  “Last one,” I said. She shut the trunk. This bag was quite full and, as I set it down on the porch, a jar of peanut butter rolled out. I shot Sandy a quizzical look.

  “I love peanut butter, but never had the opportunity to buy it when Louis was alive. He wouldn’t allow me to have any peanut products in the house. Now that he’s gone …” She inhaled sharply, as if just remembering that her husband wasn’t coming home.

  “Sandy, we brought something for you.” Desi appeared from around the corner, carrying the pan of lasagna.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. That had been way too close.

  “Why were you behind the house?” Sandy craned her head around to see where Desi had been.

  Desi waved her hand in the air and pointed. “Oh, I saw a bunny hopping off into the woods there. I just love bunnies and wanted to see it closer.” She smiled at Sandy and gushed, “You must just love living out here in the country.”

  “Not really. This was more of Louis’s thing. He spent all day at work and wanted to come home and relax away from people.” Sandy stared at her house. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to keep the house now.” She sighed dramatically. “There’re too many memories of Louis here.”

  I nodded. “I can understand that.” I myself wanted to get out of there. Turning to Desi, I said, “We should probably get going.”

  Desi shoved the tray of lasagna at Sandy, who smiled gratefully at her.

  “That was so nice of you. I asked your friend if you could come in for coffee, but she said you had to get going.”

  “Yes, unfortunately, we’ve got to get back to work. The instructions for the lasagna are printed on the top.” Desi gestured to a white label atop the foil pan. “The pan is disposable, so don’t worry about getting it back to me.”

  “Well, thank you again.” Sandy held the lasagna with one hand and unlocked the door with the other. “People have been so good to me since Louis died.” Tears appeared in her eyes.

  We nodded and waved to her before getting into the car.

  As we drove off down the driveway, gravel spitting behind us, I slumped in my seat. “That was way too close.”

  “No kidding.” Desi pushed her foot down on the accelerator as soon as we hit the blacktop. “What were you two talking about?”

  “Nothing really. I was trying to make conversation while you were gone. What took you so long anyway? She wanted to know where you were, and I had to tell her you’d gone off to look at some animal. Thank goodness you told her the same story or our excuse for being there would have been toast.”

  “Sorry. They had their garbage cans right outside the garage, so I stopped to peek at them.”

  “And you found a big bottle of peanut extract, right?” I was joking, but part of me hoped that was true.

  “Sadly, no. The garbage cans were empty. They must have been collected recently.” She pulled up to the stoplight at the gateway to Ericksville. From here, I could see all the way to the water and was able to make out the blue roof of the Boathouse. I was still a little creeped out by our trip to Sandy’s house and the further we got away from there, the better.

  “Great, so even though we now know Sandy knew about Louis’s infidelities, we don’t know if it was she or Dorinda who was telling the truth about the business.” I looked out the window, noticing how beautiful this area was.

  “Their house is awfully nice. Those furnishings weren’t cheap.”

  “I know, but maybe Ericksville Espresso used to be really profitable. Or maybe one of them had family money. Just because they have nice stuff doesn’t mean they were embezzling from the company.”

  We were still back at square one. Every new piece of information we found added to the complexity of the puzzle. I hoped we’d find the corner piece soon and could break the case, for Brenda’s sake—and mine.

  14

  By the day before the auction, I’d turned into a harried mess. Two of my friends were on my list of murder suspects, Tomàs was suspicious that Desi and I were investigating Louis’s murder, and at the moment, I was nervous about seeing my parents. I couldn’t get it out of my head that something was terribly wrong. They’d been in town since last night, but we’d made plans to meet at ten that morning.

  After getting the kids buckled in, I got into the minivan, but it seemingly drove on autopilot all the way to the hotel. My parents always stayed with us when they were in town. What was going on? By the time I arrived at the hotel, I’d worked myself into a tizzy, convinced that my mom was dying of cancer or that my father had a different fatal disease. Nothing could have prepared me for truth.

  I pulled into a space in the hotel’s parking lot and shut off the engine, peering up at the second floor. My stomach twisted painfully. I was used to worrying about my kids, but this was different. These were the people who had been there for me all my life. Psyching myself up with a deep breath, I helped the kids out of the car and walked with them through the automatic sliding doors into the hotel.

  When I knocked on the door to their room, my mother answered, looking quite healthy. So it was my dad who was sick.

  “Where’s Dad?” She sighed, and I feared the worst.

  “He’s next door.” Mikey ran to her, hugging her legs.

  “What do you mean next door? Why isn’t he in here?” I handed Ella to my mom and pushed past her into the hotel room. There was a single king-sized bed in front of a flat screen television. The luggage racks held only one suitcase. The bathroom door was open, but my father wasn’t there, or in the main room. Through a connecting door on one side of the room, my father’s voice called out, “Are they here?”

&nbs
p; “Yes,” my mother answered. I heard the sound of the Disney Channel being turned on.

  He came through the door looking in better shape than I’d ever seen him. They’d both retired from their teaching jobs at the end of the last school year and now were enjoying retirement. But if they were healthy, what was it they wanted to tell me?

  “Mikey, go in the other room. I think Grandpa turned the TV on for you.” I pointed at the open door and my father nodded.

  “Honey—” my mom began.

  “Sweetie—” said my father at the same time.

  I looked from one of them to the other. “What is going on?”

  Mom snuggled Ella to her chest and took a deep breath. “Your father and I have separated.”

  “As in you’re getting a divorce?” My tone had risen to the Minnie Mouse squeak I always developed when I was highly stressed.

  “No, no.” My father put his hand on my arm, but I backed away. “Not getting divorced at this time. It’s just that we’ve reached a new time in our lives, and we’re taking some time to evaluate whether we want to stay married.”

  “So you are getting divorced.” I sat down on the bed and held my head in my hands. This was the icing on the cake. If I didn’t crack up after this week, I could make it through anything.

  “No. Like your father said, this is a trial separation,” my mother said. She sat down next to me and put her arm around me. I melted into her like a small child needing to be comforted.

  “But you’re staying in separate rooms,” I said slowly. “How long has this been going on?”

  They looked at each other guiltily. “A few months. We wanted to tell you in person.”

  “But you love each other.” I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my stomach.

  My mother nodded. “We do, but we got married so young, and then we had you and your sister. Then we were always busy with work, but now we have a chance to reassess what we want.”

  “Like what?” I wiped tears from my cheek with the back of my hand.

  “Like your father wants us to buy a cabin in Northern Idaho to spend every summer in.”