Stormy Day Mysteries 5-Book Cozy Murder Mystery Series Bundle

by Angela Pepper

  “Right.”

  “Is her memory really that bad? I'd like to talk to her.”

  “She's too fragile.” He shook his head. “She doesn't remember taking the gun from her uncle's house, but it's not unusual for a client to hide things from her lawyer.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “I'll show her a few photos and see if that jogs her memory.”

  He started slipping on his boots.

  “Thanks for being so understanding,” he said. “You really are the best landlady I've ever had, and I never meant to draw you into this, but you said you were doing inventory, so I figured we had a few hours for her to wash some clothes. I thought some normal activity might relax her, but she's practically catatonic now.”

  “I'm so sorry I scared her. Please, tell her I'm sorry.”

  “I will. I'm not sure she can even hear me when I'm talking, though. It's not good.”

  “Hopefully she feels better soon.”

  He thanked me again, then left.

  I watched as he walked by my front window.

  Once he was out of sight, I closed the curtains, even though it was still light outside.

  Logan said his client was practically catatonic. And that she had selective memory lapses.

  This was the same woman who'd convinced an entire pub that she hated a woman who was actually her friend. Dinner theater, indeed.

  Despite wanting to believe in her innocence, it was entirely possible I was living under the same roof as a killer.

  Providing laundry facilities for a wanted fugitive.

  Sharing a hot water tank with a murderer.

  Chapter 26

  I called my father about half an hour after Logan left. I couldn't tell him about who was next door, or he'd call the police… which was what a good citizen should do.

  I was the bad one, who took a check to stay quiet.

  “How's the physiotherapy?” I asked.

  “The stretches? Horrible. If I ever say they're great, that's how you'll know I'm not doing them. Why are you really phoning?”

  “Do you want to have dinner with me?”

  “Sure, come over right now. I'll take care of everything. Could you swing by the store on your way and pick up some steaks, russet potatoes, and sour cream?”

  I enjoyed his version of taking care of everything.

  “And coffee,” he said. “Plus bread, eggs, and bacon. Are you writing this down?”

  “Yes.” I was writing his grocery list on my notepad, after the page I'd been using to doodle names for our investigation business.

  When he finished the list, I tossed the notepad and some toiletries into an overnight bag, then got Jeffrey's kitty carrier ready. I found him on my bed, watching the door, and looking edgy. He'd been off balance since the screaming in the basement.

  He gave a few protest meows, but was a champion all through the car ride to the grocery store, waiting for me to shop, then driving to my father's.

  The sun was setting when Jeffrey and I arrived at my father's. As I unloaded the car, I couldn't shake the neck-tickling sensation of being watched.

  I whipped around and caught the neighbor across the street peering at me around curtains. I gave her a friendly wave. She pretended to be tending her collection of tea roses on the windowsill.

  My father opened the door just as I was lugging everything up the porch steps.

  He frowned at the cat carrier. “No returns.”

  “We're staying overnight. Surprise! It'll be fun. We can make popcorn and watch movies in our pajamas.”

  He demanded more of an explanation, but I didn't feel right talking about it on the porch, with the eyes and ears of the neighborhood trained on us. I pushed my way in, asking if he had the grill ready.

  He didn't ask again why we were staying overnight until we'd finished cooking and eating dinner. The dishwasher was running, and he stood at the sink washing the salad bowl while I attended with the drying towel.

  “The Boomerang Generation,” he said. “That's what you are. You move away from home, then you come back like a boomerang. I heard all about it on the radio.”

  “I'm not moving in,” I said. “This is just for a few days, because I don't feel safe at my house.”

  He rinsed the glass salad bowl, then handed it to me, steaming hot.

  “Stands to reason you're scared,” he said. “Before I retired, it was part of my job to assure people we didn't have a serial killer on the loose, but just because I say reassuring things, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful. I'm sure glad to be retired now, so I can be honest.”

  I put the bowl in the cupboard, then turned to make steady contact with his gold-flecked, dark brown eyes. “You keep saying you're retired now, but I saw the papers, Dad. I saw your application to get the license. When were you going to tell me you're becoming a private investigator?”

  His dark eyes twinkled. “Never, because I'm not. The application's for you. That's why I left it where you could see it.”

  My hands went limp, and I dropped the dishtowel. He used his fancy cane for balance as he leaned forward to pick it up.

  The application was for me?

  For the previous four days, I'd been happily imagining an exciting new career as a private investigator—but that had been as my father's partner. Doing it alone? That was a whole different thing.

  “Tea,” he said, so we made tea.

  Thirty minutes later, we were sitting in the living room. He'd turned on the TV and was enjoying the view from his newly repositioned recliner. Jeffrey was making himself at home on the couch.

  The show we'd caught the tail end of finished up, and he muted the volume on the set.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “You could always apply for the police academy, and go that route, but I don't think police work is for you. You've always been so independent, and you need the intellectual challenge of investigative work. Stormy, are you listening to me? This is what you've been looking for. This is why you came back to Misty Falls.”

  “No,” I said. “This isn't what I'm looking for.”

  “Promise you'll sleep on it.”

  At my side, Jeffrey woke up, walked across my lap like I was furniture, jumped to the arm of my father's recliner, then curled up in his lap.

  My father reached for the remote control, careful to not disturb the cat, then flicked the volume back on.

  I woke up to a mix of familiar and unfamiliar: Jeffrey's whiskers tickling my face, and me in a bed that was both too firm and too soft at the same time, in that quirky way of guest room beds.

  My father and I had stayed up late, watching a funny movie about two mismatched cops. We didn't discuss the investigator's license again, but he did point out a few things during the movie, about how the cops were handling the investigation poorly. I pointed out that the bumbling officers were in pursuit of an alien artifact, then he pointed out that was no excuse for poor procedure.

  I climbed out of bed and pulled on multiple layers of clothes.

  “Dad's new timer shuts down the heat at night,” I said to Jeffrey.

  Curled in a tight ball on the pillow, where my head had warmed it, he shot me a no-kidding look. I was glad he seemed comfortable at my father's, but did he need to act that happy about my father's lap? Was it really better than mine? I suspected the little tramp had spent the night traipsing between both of our rooms.

  I brushed my teeth in the downstairs bathroom, then went up the stairs, the scent of bacon and coffee quickening my pace.

  He wouldn't let me help with breakfast, so I took a seat at the table in the kitchen and checked my phone for messages.

  There was one from Logan: Since I've paid for that retainer, I wonder if you might do one small thing for me? Very small.

  His message irritated me. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep and absence of coffee in my system, but he'd said I wasn't a real investigator. I planned to return the check, but now he wanted me to run errands? I had a bad feeling. Whenever someone says s
omething is a very small favor, it's usually the exact opposite.

  I replied: How small?

  He responded within minutes: I hear you hosted the knitting club last week. Would you be willing to host again and ask a few questions?

  The idea did not thrill me, but I still responded to say yes. Maybe the twelve ladies could help me with my knitting.

  My father set a plate holding two perfectly round, perfectly golden pancakes in front of me.

  “What's the message about?” he asked.

  “I can't tell you.”

  He sat in his regular spot, across from me. “Can't, or won't?”

  “I can and I will, but there are conditions.”

  “Like?”

  “I'm working as a consultant to Logan Sanderson,” I said. “The lawyer. You met him when he helped me climb into the car the other day, when your stupid Hobo Pride wouldn't let you accept free delivery of your rug.”

  “How's that coffee going down, Stormy?”

  “Don't say my name like that,” I snapped. “You know I hate it.”

  “Drink your coffee, then we'll talk.”

  I glowered at his insinuation that my irritation was unreasonable. I sipped some of the coffee, then grabbed a dollar bill from my wallet and slid it across the table toward him.

  “I'm hiring you.”

  He frowned at the bill. “We're getting paid two dollars?”

  I told him how much Logan's check was for, and he brightened up.

  “But you don't have your license,” he said. “Or do you?” He gave me a sidelong look that made me wish I had gotten my investigator's license already, just to surprise him. But I couldn't have gotten it on my own. In addition to sleeping on the idea, I'd also done some research the night before.

  “Dad, the state of Oregon requires me to have fifteen hundred hours of investigative experience before I can apply for a license. But you knew that, didn't you? I need to apprentice with somebody.”

  He glanced up at the ceiling, his brown eyes almost as innocent as the green eyes of the cat sitting on the chair next to mine, eyeballing our bacon.

  “This was your plan all along,” I said. “Instead of just asking me to be your partner, you wanted me to think it was my idea.”

  He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “My idea, your idea, it's still a good one.”

  “Why couldn't you just ask me? Sometimes you drive me so nuts, the way I have to drag stuff out of you. And you wonder why I'm grumpy sometimes.”

  He got up and tidied the kitchen counter for a moment, grabbed the coffee carafe, then came back to the table with a somber expression. I finished drinking my cup and held it out for a refill.

  “I couldn't ask,” he said. “Investigating can be dangerous. I nearly got you killed once already.”

  “Twice if we count the tub thing, but that wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known.”

  “But it was because of my choices. Bad choices. And other people paid the consequences.”

  He stood with the coffee pot in hand, not moving, the pain of his regret on his face.

  “Dad…”

  “The reason I haven't asked you yet is because I made a promise to someone a long time ago. She didn't want her girls doing anything dangerous.”

  “Oh.”

  He started pouring my coffee. The room was so still that I could hear the liquid splashing in my cup. The air around us felt thick, like time was frozen.

  Not every significant moment of choice feels like one. I'd walked away from an engagement and a whole life without having one of these moments. Leaving Christopher and the business had just felt inevitable—the natural outcome of all the players and forces involved, without any choice.

  This moment, however, felt like standing in the forest at a fork in the path. My mother wouldn't have wanted me to be an investigator.

  As for me, I didn't know what I wanted.

  “Forget about your promise,” I said. “She's not here anymore. I get to do whatever I want. We both do.”

  Chapter 27

  We were quietly finishing breakfast when I got another message from Logan: Who did you get this printout from? It's a fake. The website address printed on the footer gives me a blank page. I've searched the film company's name and found nothing.

  I replied: Bernard Goldstein doesn't exist?

  Logan: There are dozens of Bernard Goldsteins on the internet, but none of them are this guy. I did an image search and found his face on a stock photo site. Our voodoo lady was pulling a Ponzi scheme. I need to know where this printout came from.

  Me: Don't worry about that. The website was real. I saw it myself when I made the printout on the day of the wake.

  Logan: That means the site was taken down after her death.

  Me: She did have a partner. OMG.

  Logan: Did you really just say OMG?

  Me: I'm hip, I'm cool, I say OMG. Especially when we get a big lead.

  Logan: How did you come by this information about Bernard, anyway?

  Me: It came to me through the grapevine. I'm not at liberty to discuss.

  As I waited for him to reply, I really hoped he wouldn't press me for the name of my contact. I couldn't tell him the information had come through Ruby and her Secret Tearoom Ladies.

  Two minutes later, Logan still hadn't replied to my last message. I sent him a smiley face to lighten my previous dismissal, but still there was no response.

  “Why are you scowling?” asked my father.

  I relaxed my face. “Scowling?”

  “You have a terrible poker face when you're texting. Terrible. I saw at least five emotions on your face just now, and you weren't paying any attention to your surroundings. You were sucked into that little screen. I could have leaned over and read the whole exchange, if I wanted to. Was that the lawyer?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him playfully. “That's information for my partner. Are you taking the dollar?”

  He flung his hand in the air dramatically, swept it down to snatch up the dollar bill, then tucked the money into his shirt pocket.

  “Partners,” he said.

  “Well, partner, prepare to have your mind blown,” I said proudly. “I found Dharma Lake. She's at my house, staying with Logan. He's defending her, or at least he will be, once she turns herself in.”

  “I knew that.”

  “You did not.”

  He grinned as he reached for the last piece of bacon. “You should put a better password on your phone than your cat's name.”

  I groaned. He did have a point.

  I pulled up the option to change my phone's password, and tried to think of a new one. I'd only put a password on recently, after taking the crime scene photos at Voula's creepy house. I didn't want a friend grabbing my phone to check the time and accidentally getting an eyeful.

  What would be a good password?

  Security experts always tell you not to use birthdays or your pet's name, but they never give you ideas about what you should use. Given how suggestible the mind is, this leads to you staring at the password input screen unable to think of any word except your pet's name.

  My father said, “Don't use your birthday, or 1234, and don't use the word password.”

  I glanced around for something basic yet memorable, then tapped it in.

  “Your password is bacon,” he said.

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Are you a mind reader?” He couldn't have seen the screen, because I was careful to hold it facing away from his prying eyes. However, if my father did have supernatural powers, it would explain a lot.

  “Yes, I am a mind reader. But it's a learned skill.” He pointed his finger at my eyes. “I was watching your eyes. Your attention settled on the bacon plate, you raised your eyebrows, then tapped in a five-letter code. I might have guessed plate, which also fits, but plate wouldn't have made you lick your lips the way bacon did.”

  “Okay, that's pretty cool. I need to learn how to do that.”

 
“You will.”

  I set the phone on the counter. “I'll leave the password as bacon. Other people won't guess, and it's okay if you have my password.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Should I be upset with you for looking at my phone last night while I was sleeping?”

  “It was when you went to the washroom.”

  “Hmm.”

  He started clearing away the dishes and said, casually, “We'll go over the crime scene today. Not the photos. The actual crime scene.”

  “Has it been released? Do you have someone in mind who'll get us access?” My mouth got an unpleasant metallic taste at the idea of revisiting the creepy house.

  “I haven't shown you how to pick a lock yet. This will be a good teaching moment.”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “Absolutely not. We're not breaking into anywhere. Can you imagine the ruckus if we got caught?”

  He smiled, because he could imagine the ruckus, and that made it more fun.

  “Let's just keep a low profile for a few more days, until the next knitting club meeting. Logan wants me to host again, and pump them for information. That reminds me, I should call Barbara and have her put out the word.”

  My father told me to go ahead. He got his new laptop out and checked his email while I called Barbara.

  We set up the next knitting club meeting, to be held at my house again, and then she gave me an earful about her ex-husband being so difficult.

  “That sounds really upsetting,” I said after hearing some details. “Exes have a way of passive-aggressively getting under your skin.”

  “He says he's concerned about me,” she sniffed. “He says the one thing in common with all my disasters is me. Like everything's my fault.”

  “Sounds familiar. Hey, what's his address? I'll go over and give him something to be concerned about.”

  To my surprise, she immediately gave me her ex-husband's full name and business address.

  Hank Kettner had an insurance company, located in the business strip connected to the grocery store. I tried to tell her I'd only been joking about threatening him, but she'd already hung up, probably to blow her nose and then eat a box of cake mix by the sound of it.