Pawsitively Fatal (Silver Springs Cozy Mystery Series Book 4)

by Ginny Gold

  Daniel chuckles and leans forward, the same cocky grin Maggie hated as a teenager appearing on his face. “I need a little more than ‘reason to believe.’ You know that.”

  “He used to live and work in the same town as Karl Jacobs. And I think he lived with Mitch Cable. You can’t say he doesn’t keep interesting friends.”

  Daniel clasps his hands on his desk and bows his head before looking back up and responding. “That’s quite the stretch.”

  “I know. But hear me out. Josh, Mitch and Karl all knew each other in Two Forks, Iowa, and they’ve all been connected to murders and thefts in Silver Springs. It has to be more than coincidence that Travis used to live in Two Forks and is now in Silver Springs, too.”

  “It does sound like more than a coincidence. I’ll put someone on it. But it’s not our top priority,” Daniel finally concedes.

  “Thank you.” Maggie breathes a sigh of relief. “Who is your top priority?” she asks, letting Daniel’s last words sink in.

  “Mona Fitch. She was in charge of the books for Flower Power. Did you get a chance to look at the copies I gave you yesterday?”

  Maggie forces herself not to look at Drew. He identified Mona as a possible suspect last night but Maggie has yet to do anything about it. “I did.”

  “Well, there was a lot more going on than what met the eye. We haven’t brought her in yet but she’ll likely be in our custody, at least for questioning, by this afternoon.”

  Maggie nods. “That’s great. Let me know what comes of that.”

  “Of course. Anything else I should know about?”

  Maggie almost shakes her head no but then remembers Kami’s appearance at Two Sisters yesterday afternoon and Anya’s this morning at James’s house. She quickly shares both of those visits with Daniel, hoping he’ll rule them out so they can focus on just Travis and Mona.

  “We suspected Kami might make an angry appearance. But Anya is a new name for this case.”

  Maggie hesitates to share even more possible suspects but knows she has to. “And I talked to Winona. She remembered that Gina Coon and Tess Shea from The Coffee Bean were in Flower Power at the time she found James’s body.”

  Drew nods. “This is quite the list of suspects we have.”

  Maggie agrees. “I’m sure we can narrow it down by figuring out if Travis or Mona is guilty. That would end the investigation.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “But I really have to get going. Two Sisters is still closed. Clem would kill me if she knew.” She immediately regrets her choice of words but she can’t take them back.

  Daniel seems to notice her slip of the tongue as well. “I don’t think she’d go that far,” he says, smiling. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll let you know what else turns up today.” He maintains eye contact with Maggie the whole time, never once acknowledging Drew’s presence.

  Back in the car, Maggie’s brain is on overdrive. She doesn’t even register Drew’s question until he touches her arm to get her attention. She turns and sees he’s laughing.

  “What?” she asks.

  “You’re totally lost in this case. I asked what your plan of attack is.”

  Maggie smiles and starts driving toward Drew’s house. “I want to talk to Mona before she’s arrested but I have to get to work. Do you think she’s running Flower Power now?”

  “I don’t know. But it sounds like she’s in a heap of trouble.”

  Maggie nods. “Maybe you could talk to her for me.” She’d rather do it herself but Clem is counting on her to run the store and it’s already almost noon. It’s been closed all morning.

  “Sorry, but I’m already late for work too.” Maggie knew it was a long shot. “But if you’re right and Travis is guilty and this is all connected to the keys and time travel,” Drew is one of the only people outside of the group of women in possession of the trinkets who knows about it all, “then you could be in danger. Is there any talk among you women about dealing with this all moving forward?”

  Maggie pulls into Drew’s driveway and stops. “There’s talk. But no consensus. We’ll get there.”

  “What’s to decide? If you’re not safe, it all has to be destroyed.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Especially after reading about everything that can go wrong. I found my mom’s journal yesterday,” she explains. “But Winona found a second one that had only success stories—all the possibilities for improving life without being greedy or changing the course of history.”

  Drew nods. “Well, stay safe.” He leans over and kisses Maggie’s cheek before leaving the car.

  “Always.”

  Maggie waits until Drew walks inside, enjoying the view from behind, and then drives straight to Two Sisters. She feels guilty for opening so late, and as soon as she unlocks the door her first customers walk in.

  “Good morning,” Maggie greets the couple and holds the door open for them.

  They smile in return and start walking a slow path around the store. Maggie lets them be and stands behind the counter with her tablet computer. She has plenty of questions about the growing list of suspects and hopes to get some research done while working.

  Daniel’s words spin in her mind and the first person Maggie wants to learn more about is Mona Fitch, James’s employee. Maggie starts on Facebook, though she hardly ever uses her own profile.

  A quick search reveals that Mona is more trusting than she should be and has left her privacy settings wide open for anyone to view her profile. The first thing Maggie notices is that Mona has a party side to her that she should keep private. Pictures speak a thousand words, and the photos don’t do Mona any favors. She looks like she never left college and is still partying regularly.

  Moving on from the photos, Maggie scrolls down Mona’s timeline. The much younger woman is clearly a Facebook addict, making posts more than once a day, mostly about menial things. But there are plenty of friends who comment who seem to relish in the mundane going-ons of Mona’s life.

  Suddenly, a post from two weeks ago makes Maggie’s blood run cold. It starts, My boss has it out for me, and continues to attack James both personally and professionally.

  Maggie’s eyes widen as she reads the comments. Mona’s friends find her rant justified. And the most outspoken of all of the commenters is Tess Shea.

  CHAPTER 16

  Unfortunately, Facebook offers less than an ideal platform to research possible murder suspects. After reading Tess’s comments on Mona’s Facebook profile, Maggie heads to Tess’s profile but finds her privacy settings much more stringent. Maggie can only see her profile photo updates and can’t glean anything about Tess’s past relationship with James.

  She’s soon interrupted anyway when the couple who has been happily browsing suddenly knocks over a display of old silver spoons from around the world. Maggie looks up and winces. Clem will know as soon as she walks in this weekend that nothing is in the right place even though it will look perfectly organized to anyone else.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the woman cries as Maggie walks over to help pick everything up. The woman is already down on her hands and knees, carefully picking up every last spoon while her husband looks on, red in the face with embarrassment.

  “It’s okay. Nothing broke.” Maggie kneels down beside her and helps clean up. The silver spoons are displayed in wooden goblets from southern Africa, creating a stark contrast in materials and colors.

  Once everything is back on the table and Maggie thinks it’s as close to how it used to look as possible, the couple quickly exits the store. Maggie can feel their anxiety leave with them and she breathes a huge sigh of relief. She’d so much rather be out talking to Mona and Tess about James’s murder, but she knows staying in Two Sisters is the responsible thing to do. She owes it to Clem to run the store for a week after everything she’s done for Maggie since she moved to Silver Springs in September.

  Still standing in front of the display of spoons, Maggie stretches her back and wishes she had more to do while Clem is away. Th
e ringing of the phone in the phone booth pushes Maggie into action and she answers it quickly.

  “James, thank goodness,” she answers breathlessly. She’s just relieved to have something to think about other than antiques and customer service.

  “You have good news?” His voice is just as happy as during yesterday’s conversation. “You know what happened to me?”

  Maggie leans her forehead against the cool glass of the phone booth. She wishes she could tell him that. “No. I have my theory but it doesn’t line up with what Winona heard. Do you know Travis Kirsch?”

  “Of course. He’s responsible for appraising everything I left to Two Sisters and the mining museum. Have you met him yet?”

  “Yes. I went to your house today. You have some incredible pieces, and I don’t really know the first thing about antiques.”

  “But you run an antiques shop.” James laughs.

  Maggie nods to herself. “It’s really Clem’s area of expertise. She just did me a favor and hired me to help out, but she’s the one with all the knowledge. And she’s out of town on her honeymoon.”

  James gasps. “Oh that’s right. I can’t believe I was killed on her wedding day. I completely forgot when we talked yesterday.” Maggie can picture James’s hands waving exuberantly through the air as he speaks.

  “I’m not sure she even knows about your murder yet,” Maggie reassures him. “We kept it quiet at her wedding and she left Saturday night for Costa Rica.”

  “That was nice of you,” he gushes.

  “But back to who killed you,” Maggie says, trying to steer the conversation back around to what she wants to know, and what James must want to know as well.

  “Right.”

  “Did you hear any men’s voices in the store before you were killed?”

  There’s a short pause before he answers. “No. I don’t think I did. Just women.”

  “That’s what Winona said too.”

  “Do you think it was a man?” he asks, his voice growing unnecessarily quiet.

  “I thought it could be,” Maggie admits. She doesn’t want to share that Travis is her primary male suspect since James entrusted him with quite a large task. “But no one can place any men in your store. Besides you, of course.”

  “Of course,” he repeats through laughter.

  “Anya showed up at your house this morning.”

  James sucks in another gasp. “She didn’t. Oh, the nerve of that woman.” This is the angriest Maggie has heard him in their two short conversations. “She has no right—”

  “She said I’ll be hearing from her lawyer. Why is she so dead set on getting something from your inheritance?”

  There’s a long pause before James answers, making Maggie question whether he’s still there. “She’s quite . . . conservative . . . and couldn’t accept that I prefer men over women.”

  Maggie waits for him to continue. From Anya’s perspective, James did cheat on her, Maggie thinks. Whether or not she was accepting of his sexual preferences, James was in the wrong.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Cheating is cheating. I know I messed up. But she couldn’t get over who I cheated with. For her, it was never about my infidelity. It was about my choice of a partner.”

  “What was your relationship like after you divorced?”

  “Not good. She followed me to Silver Springs. She essentially became my stalker.” Maggie remembers Anya’s claim about James stalking her. “I had to live with one eye on her all the time.”

  “Would she have wanted you dead?”

  Maggie waits several seconds for an answer before she knows James is gone. As soon as she steps out from the phone booth, the front door opens and she’s sure that she’s just avoided having to explain why she was talking on a phone that isn’t functional. There are very few people who know that its only function is talking to ghosts.

  Maggie looks to the front door and is shocked to see that Mona has just walked in.

  “Can I help you find anything?” Maggie asks in an overly sweet tone that makes her skin crawl. She doesn’t like the voice she adopts when talking to customers.

  In response, Mona glares at Maggie. Her lips make a tight line that turns white as anger grows in her eyes. She points her finger at Maggie and Maggie takes a step back.

  “You have no idea what you’re getting involved in,” Mona says in a threatening tone, her finger still pointing at Maggie.

  Maggie holds up her hands in defense or defeat, she’s not sure which. “I don’t think I’m involved in anything.”

  “Sending the cops to come talk to me because there were financial discrepancies at Flower Power.”

  Maggie shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was Daniel who said he wanted to bring Mona in for questioning. Maggie didn’t have anything to do with it. Did he throw her under the bus?

  “I was only doing what James told me to.”

  Maggie pulls herself together. If Mona is going to accuse Maggie of ridiculous things, she’ll play her game and do the same thing. Maybe she’ll even get some information out of her. “Like taking plenty of extra travel on the company’s dime?”

  Mona’s face turns as white as her lips were when she walked in. “How did you know about that?” she whispers and Maggie knows she’s found a weak spot.

  “I was given a copy of the financial records, you were in charge of them, so I took a guess. Thanks for confirming.” Maggie shrugs.

  Mona’s shoulders drop. “Look, it’s not what it looks like.”

  “Have you already talked to the police?” Maggie interrupts.

  Mona shakes her head, completely defeated. “But I know they’re coming for me. Tess told me.”

  “How did Tess know?”

  “I don’t know.” Mona pauses and her eyes are filled with tears that threaten to spill over. “If you’re working on this case for the police, I need your help. I didn’t kill James.”

  Maggie’s mouth falls slightly open but she catches herself. The last thing she expected Mona to ask for was her help, especially after her wild accusations when she entered the store.

  “You are working for the police on this, aren’t you?” Mona asks, desperation in her voice.

  Maggie nods.

  “Then I need you to help me prove I’m innocent. If they’re arresting me, I need you to be on my side.”

  “I’m not a lawyer,” Maggie says, not sure she believes Mona’s story. She motions for Mona to come further into the store and leads her to the two comfortable chairs by the register.

  Mona sits before responding. “I know. I’m not looking for a lawyer. I’m innocent so I don’t need one.”

  Maggie meets her eye. “Even if you didn’t kill James, you had your name all over those books and they weren’t up to par.”

  “It wasn’t up to me. James would have fired me. I needed this job.” A single tear finally slides down Mona’s cheek and she wipes it away, pulling herself together.

  “Tell me what you know then. If you want my help, you have to be completely honest with me.”

  Mona leans back in her chair and sighs. The look of relief is visible and Maggie wonders for a brief moment if she’s telling the truth, if she is actually innocent.

  “I know it doesn’t look good with the books. But that was all James, I swear.”

  “Fine,” Maggie says, wanting to move on. “Who all was in Flower Power when James was killed?”

  Mona nods, a look of determination on her face. “I was there with Krystal. And Tess and Gina came over from The Coffee Bean because they were helping with the catering but stopped to check on the flowers on their way to the wedding.”

  This is all old news to Maggie, but it’s reassuring to hear it from multiple sources.

  “But there was an entrance from the outside straight into the cooler. No one who didn’t work there would have known about it.”

  Maggie thinks back to the employee records and makes a mental note to look at that l
ist again. Any past employee would presumably know about the back entrance.

  “Or anyone James showed it to. I suspect Kami and Anya both knew about it,” Mona says quietly.

  Maggie looks up quickly and meets Mona’s gaze. “What makes you bring up both of those names?”

  She scoffs. “It’s no secret that James didn’t get along with either of them. Kami suspected something was up when he changed his will. She was sucking up to him to try to get him to tell her what. I heard she had a copy of the will but was sworn not to open it unless he died.” Maggie nods, confirming the rumor Mona had heard.

  If Kami was suspicious of being cut out of James’s will, why wouldn’t she wait to kill him until after the will had been changed again to include her? Killing him now would ensure that she didn’t see a dime of his inheritance.

  “And Anya?” Maggie asks.

  “I don’t know who was stalking whom in that relationship, but it was messed up. Anya is a city girl all the way and she followed him to Silver Springs. She couldn’t let it go that he cheated on her with a guy. And they didn’t even stay together. James was single. But definitely not into Anya anymore.”

  “What about Krystal?” Maggie asks. There’s been little said about James’s second employee.

  “She’s a goodie two shoes. She wouldn’t have been involved in any way. Not even telling someone about the back door to the cooler.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?” Maggie raises an eyebrow.

  Mona shakes her head. “Of course not. It was one of the first things James told his employees. He wanted to keep it secret. Who knows why.”

  “Any past employee who had it out for James?”

  “Not an employee that I know of. But someone who didn’t exactly get along with James. Tess Shea.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Tess Shea?” Her name has come up enough to make Maggie suspicious, but without any other details, she’s had nothing to go on to investigate.

  “Yeah. She hasn’t had a good thing to say about James ever since I started working for him.”

  “What happened?” Maggie remembers that Mona lives with Tess.