Stormy Day Mysteries 5-Book Cozy Murder Mystery Series Bundle

by Angela Pepper

  “They exorcised Della Koenig right out of here, huh? Probably for the best.”

  Quinn snorted. “That woman was a diva even before she got rich. Now she's a full-blown train wreck. I'm surprised we don't have paparazzi popping up in town.” She tilted her head to the side and got a funny smile. “But the press will be coming, soon enough.” Her smile got bigger and smugger.

  Jessica took the bait. “Quinn, what are you talking about?”

  Quinn breathed in the attention, sucking it all in like fuel for her ego. “Ladies, I'm not supposed to say anything until the big announcement tomorrow, but I'll give you a hint. It's big news.”

  Jessica punched her on the arm. Hard. Because that's the only way Jessica punches. Growing up the little sister to twin brothers made her tough physically, if not emotionally.

  Quinn whimpered and rubbed her arm. “Easy, killer.” She looked around the table with a sour expression. “I'll tell you guys, but only if you promise to come to the casino tomorrow. And you'd better act surprised.”

  Jessica asked, “Is this about your hootenanny next Friday?”

  “Yes and no,” Quinn said. “Are you coming to the casino tomorrow?”

  Harper shuddered. “I'm out. That place gives me the creeps. Too much of the sort of element I moved here to get away from.”

  “Don't be a baby,” Quinn teased.

  I said to Quinn, “I can't go to the casino. I can't really get into the explanation, but I saw Trigger Canuso recently, she threatened to pull my legs off if she caught me on her land.”

  Jessica gasped. “Pull your legs off?”

  “Not in so many words,” I said. “But I don't want to find out how serious she was. She's tiny but tough. Like a wolverine.”

  Quinn said in a loud voice, “Michael actually went out with Trigger for a while. Did you hear about that? He said it was part of his personal sensitivity training program, to date one of them. I wonder where Trigger was the day Michael got killed.”

  Jessica elbowed Quinn. “Keep your voice down, Queen Bee.”

  In a hushed tone, I chimed in, “If you want to hurl accusations around, could you do it at a more discreet volume?”

  Quinn shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, please. Like everyone in this Podunk little town isn't already thinking it. Look around. They're all staring at you, Stormy. They think you know everything.”

  I snuck a look behind me. She wasn't wrong. A few people were looking our way, but it probably had more to do with Quinn's volume, which was as loud and bossy as it had been during our cheerleader days.

  Harper started pulling on her leather jacket. “Girls, thanks for inviting me out tonight, but I've got a busy day tomorrow. I'll be looking for a new job.”

  Jessica said, “I'm sure you can get your old shifts back at the Olive Grove.”

  “No offense, but it's not much of a career path,” Harper said. “The next step up from waitress is manager, which is all the same drama minus the tips.”

  “Right,” Jessica said through a tight smile. “Thanks for joining us tonight. It's certainly been interesting.”

  Quinn pushed her chair back and got up quickly. “Harper, I'll walk you to your car.”

  Harper wrinkled her nose and looked right at me. “I sold my car,” she said.

  “Then I'll give you a ride home, dummy,” Quinn said in her bossiest Queen Bee tone. “I want to talk about some future job opportunities you might be interested in.”

  Harper brightened. “Can your husband, Chip, put in a good word for me with the post office?”

  “Uh... sure.” Quinn grabbed Harper's arm at the elbow and began steering her away from the table.

  “Great to see you,” I called after Quinn. “Really good quality time!”

  She must have caught some of my sarcasm because she raised her free hand to give me the bird.

  “Never change,” I called after her, laughing.

  I turned back around to face Jessica.

  “Classic Quinn Baudelaire,” I said. “Breeze in. Stir up trouble. Walk away as the bombs go off.”

  “You're the one who breezed in a full two hours after we were supposed to meet up,” Jessica said. “And it's Quinn McCabe now. She's been warring with the other Baudelaires for a few years now and hates the sound of the name.”

  “Who would have ever guessed back in school that the Queen Bee would end up domesticated and married to a chubby mailman who I could have sworn wasn't into women?”

  Jessica gave me a saucy look, batting her eyelashes. “Just because Chip McCabe didn't throw himself at your feet, it doesn't mean he's gay.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Our waitress, Dharma, appeared at that moment to whisk away Harper's half-empty beer bottle and Quinn's sticky martini glass. “Who's gay? I know a few single boys who'd love to meet someone. Really nice guys.” She winked at us. “I'm an equal opportunity matchmaker!”

  I shook my head. “We were talking about a famous actor. Nobody you'd know.”

  “Okay,” Dharma said. “FYI, your blond friends stopped by the bar on the way, and the loud, bossy one told me you're picking up her tab.”

  “Classic Quinn,” I said ruefully.

  After Dharma left, Jessica and I spent the better part of an hour trashing on Quinn. I'd forgotten about some of her high school antics, but tonight's bossiness had brought back memories. Especially the part where she'd called Harper, a girl she barely knew, a dummy.

  We eventually circled back around to the topic of Michael Sweet and what I thought about the evening's revelations.

  “Maybe he was some kind of porn addict slacker.” I looked down at the dregs of my second drink, which had been an Irish coffee minus the Irish—in other words, a lousy instant coffee with not enough whipped cream. “It doesn't really matter that he lied to his assistant and the daycare ladies about being on the golf course that day so he could get a few minutes alone to catch up on his reading.”

  Jessica swirled her white wine sangria, staring at the chunks of fruit as though the medley might hold clues, the way tea leaves do for fortune-tellers.

  “It's so hard to believe he's gone,” she said. “Are you sure he's dead?”

  I nearly spit out the coffee I'd been sipping. “Don't worry,” I said. “He's dead. When I was inside the funeral home yesterday, I stuck my fingers up his nostrils to make sure he wasn't breathing.”

  “Very funny,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “I really did,” I said, and then I told her about Peggy Wiggles walking in on me. I also caught her up on what I'd overheard Samantha saying in the washroom. I left out the part about Jinx being the other party present.

  We both agreed that it was a sad, tragic situation.

  Jessica used her straw to stab the fruit chunks in her glass so she could eat them.

  “Quinn never told us the big news,” she said. “Should we go to the casino tomorrow to find out?”

  “We can go, but I'll need to be wearing a full disguise so Trigger doesn't spot me on the security cameras and rip my legs off.”

  She tilted her head and gave me a curious look. “Do you actually own any disguises?”

  “What kind of self-respecting PI wouldn't have an arsenal of disguises?”

  “A PI like you,” she said. “You hate shopping.”

  She had a point. My preferred method of shopping was to pop my head into Blue Enchantment when I saw a nice mannequin in the window and buy the whole outfit without setting foot in the changing rooms.

  “Guilty as charged,” I said. “But I recently acquired a trunk full of my dad's old clothes. You'd be surprised how much a men's jacket and a fedora can change your appearance.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tell me you don't have spirit gum and a selection of beards and goatees.”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” I said. “I only have one mustache, but Jeffrey thought it was a creature to be mauled and eaten, so it's really just half a mustache.”

  Jessica put her face in her hands a
nd laughed.

  I laughed as well.

  After the week I'd had, from turning in an old friend, to pulling apart a family and watching a decent woman go crazy, it felt good to laugh and plan a caper.

  Chapter 33

  SATURDAY

  On Saturday, Jessica's mother came by to drop off some wigs so we could disguise ourselves for the visit to the casino. She stuck around for a while, visiting, and we were happy to have her join us for dinner.

  We skipped a traditional main course and instead enjoyed a large antipasto platter of cheese, vegetables, and smoked meats. Jessica leaned toward a vegetarian diet but ate meat sometimes, especially when it was high-quality prosciutto wrapped around asparagus.

  After the antipasto, I cleared away the dishes while Jessica scooped out gelato for dessert.

  I wasn't going to have any of the Italian ice cream, but Mrs. Kelly insisted I have some, and assured me that my figure was “still perfect” even if I was showing some evidence of a diet that included gas station hot dogs.

  On her way out after dessert, Mrs. Kelly gave me a warm hug and thanked me for being a “remarkable young woman” and a “true friend” to Jessica.

  As she drove away and we waved to her from the living room's front window, I said to Jessica, “Your mother is the best.”

  “Too bad your father didn't think so,” she said, laughing. Long ago, when we'd been much younger and blissfully naive, we'd schemed to get our two single parents to fall in love. We agreed it would be the greatest thing. We would be stepsisters, and she could team up with me against our other sister, Sunny. It was a great idea, or so we thought.

  The first step of a typical Jessica-Stormy-matchmaking scheme was to find something at the Kelly household that was broken. This wasn't difficult, considering how boisterous Jessica's older brothers were, but we weren't above breaking something intentionally. Then, when it was time for my father to retrieve me from a sleepover, I'd ask him to bring his tools and do some handyman work for Mrs. Kelly. Being a good fellow who would go to great lengths to be of service to the community, he would always oblige.

  At the time, to our immature minds, our scheming had seemed to work. Each fix-it trip brought them into closer contact. We would hear the two of them talking and laughing. Unfortunately, my father had been faking it. He interpreted Mrs. Kelly's appreciation of his talents as an indictment of men in general. It must have been the wording of her compliments. She would say things like, “Aren't you useful, for a man!” It was just her dry sense of humor.

  Thinking back, I had to give credit to my younger self. I didn't yet know what wasn't possible, so I didn't put any limits on my hopes. Now that I was older, I had reservations about everything. I'd failed at so many things over the last two decades. Career. Relationships. Attempts at finding a relaxing hobby that didn't get me in trouble.

  Some days it took considerable effort to reframe all my mistakes as simply steps to acquiring wisdom.

  I wondered, in the future, when I was looking back on tonight, would I see going to the casino as a terrible mistake? Probably. But I was going to do it anyway. The excitement of doing something I wasn't supposed to do was an effective way for me to be present, in the here and now. I wasn't like Jessica, who was a more cautious, fearful soul. Taking risks made me feel alive. Maybe that was why we got along so well—we complemented each other.

  She looked up from her bowl of ice cream. We'd had a second helping after her mother left. It was Jessica's idea, I swear.

  “You've got zombie eyes,” she said. “Are you sleep-eating?”

  “Just thinking about how the passage of time changes things and gives you perspective.”

  “Still waters run deep.” She lifted the small dessert bowl to her mouth and poured the melted gelato into her mouth. “Shall we go try on those wigs?”

  “Sure,” I said, patting my full stomach. I got up and “accidentally” set my gelato bowl on the floor for Jeffrey to lick clean. Jessica did the same.

  We brought her mother's wigs into the bathroom, which had the largest mirror. She showed me how to pin back my real hair and then how to fasten the wig, which was a strawberry-blond color.

  “This looks like real hair,” I said. “Seriously. This must have been expensive.”

  “It would have been, but it was a donation. From when she was doing her chemo.”

  “What?” I took a step back and turned to look at Jessica. “When was that?”

  She waved her hand. “It was a couple years ago. You were busy at Fairchild, and we weren't talking all that much.” Her eyes started shining. She blinked rapidly and looked down at the sink. “She's clear now, so it all worked out. Please don't bring it up with her. She doesn't like talking about it.” She didn't say the words, but I heard neither do I.

  “I'm so sorry,” I said. “I didn't even know.”

  “Actually, you did,” she said softly. “I mentioned it once, but then you didn't ask again, so I thought maybe it was too painful for you to talk about, because of how you lost your mother when you were so young.”

  I was speechless. What she was saying sounded familiar, or at least it sounded like something I might have done. I'd been so focused on my career, and on Christopher, that I had put Misty Falls and all of its contents behind me. And then I'd been so mystified about why I had such a big hole in my heart.

  “Don't sweat it,” Jessica said. “Stuff happens. That's life.” She picked up a wide-toothed comb from the edge of the sink and smoothed down my strawberry-blond wig. “This color looks cute on you. Not natural or anything, but totally cute.”

  I looked in the mirror and imagined Mrs. Kelly, bald from her chemo treatments, wearing the wig. Grim reality definitely took away some of the fun factor.

  “No wig for me tonight,” I said, slipping it off.

  Jessica, who could be perceptive to the point of reading my mind at times, asked, “Because it's a chemo wig?”

  “No,” I lied. “I just think it will be too itchy. My scalp already feels like it's crawling with ants.” I gestured to the other wig, the bright blond one. “But you should wear that one. You'll look like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Or my old Sunday school teacher. She had hair just like that. And her name was Marilyn, coincidentally enough.”

  “Stop stalling and put it on,” I said.

  She did, and the transformation was surprising. She applied some extra concealer over her nose to conceal her freckles, and she looked like a different person.

  “Gorgeous,” I said. “And Jessica, I'm not just saying this because you look like a movie star, but you mean the world to me. And I'm so sorry about not being a better friend to you in the past. If there was one thing I could change, I—”

  She clamped her hand over my mouth. “That's enough, Sappy McSapperson.”

  I raised my eyebrows and allowed myself to be silenced.

  Jessica, the blond bombshell, whispered theatrically, “You had me at 'you look like a movie star.' Now let's go have a fun Saturday night at the casino.”

  I nodded. She released her hand from my mouth slowly.

  “I'll go make sure Jeffrey has enough food,” she said. “We wouldn't want His Royal Fluffiness to starve while we're having Roomies' Night Out.”

  She left me alone in the bathroom.

  I was ready to go, but I stalled by trying on a few shades of lipstick.

  Jeffrey came in and jumped up on the vanity counter with ease, like a dark gray puff of smoke. He gave me a questioning look, his green eyes inquisitive.

  “You sure do know your name,” I told him. “Yes, we were talking about you a minute ago. How come you know your name, but you don't know what it means when I say don't touch?”

  He blinked, looked down, and tentatively swatted a tube of lipstick with one gray paw. His rose-colored toe pads were a similar shade to the lipstick.

  “Don't knock that over,” I said. “Don't touch.”

  He curled his toes, claws extended, and delicately pu
shed the tube toward the brink.

  “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead. Give it another nudge and see what happens.”

  He gave it another delicate swat, sending the tube swirling around in the sink like a skateboarder in a skate park bowl. He tilted his head and watched it even after it had stopped rolling, as though it might suddenly reverse direction and spin out again.

  “Good work, genius.” I picked him up, gave him a kiss on the top of his head, and put him down. He caught the smell of the food Jessica was preparing and scampered off.

  I looked at my lips in the mirror, sighed, and reached for a tissue.

  “This is why I don't wear lipstick,” I muttered through gray-fur-covered lips.

  Before Jessica and I left, we popped over next door to see if either Logan or Jinx had changed their minds about coming with us.

  Logan wasn't there. He was out picking up groceries, according to his little sister, Jinx, who was sitting on a beach towel on the living room floor, painting her toenails.

  Jinx said, “We've got a full evening planned, between eating chicken wings and watching old movies. Hey, why don't you drop by after and fill us in on your bossy cheerleader friend's big announcement? We can save you some chicken wings, and I'll be happy to share the couch. It ain't no thaing. I'm kinda curious about the news. It'll be a nice change of pace from all the funeral stuff.”

  Jessica and I exchanged a look, grinning.

  “We already know what it is,” Jessica told her. “The newspaper says they're announcing the role of Kinley tonight, and that it's a child who lives in Misty Falls.”

  “It's going to be Quinn's daughter, Quinby,” I said.

  Jinx asked, “How can you be sure it's her kid?”

  “Because Quinn's excited about it,” I said. “And Quinn only gets excited about things that benefit her.”

  Jinx made an ah face. “I know people like that.”

  Jessica wrinkled her pale, freckles-hidden nose at me. “Quinn's going to be unbearable.”

  I replied, “More than before?”

  All three of us laughed.

  Jinx said, “Jessica, I love this blond bombshell look for you. I almost didn't recognize you when you came in.” She finished applying dark red polish to her toenails, put the lid back on the bottle, and waved for Jessica to twirl around. “Let me see you spin!”