Cozy Mystery Box Set: Murder Mysteries in the Mountains Read online

  Randolf, she saw, was asleep in a chair next to her. In his sleep, he looked years younger, almost like a little boy. She smiled at him, and then crept out of the house, hoping that no one had noticed her absence.

  Karen was waiting for her at home with a raised eyebrow.

  “Don’t ask,” Victoria said, rushing around to get ready.

  “Vanilla woke me up asking for a walk,” Karen said, following her. “I noticed you were gone and got a little worried.”

  “Not worried enough to phone me, though,” Victoria said.

  “Well… I thought you’re an adult, and you can take care of yourself.” Karen shrugged. “You can take care of yourself, right, Victoria?”

  “I’m alright, and it’s not what you’re thinking. I’d just gone to ask Randolf about some...”

  “Ah, Corporal Jager is just plain old Randolf now, is he?” Karen asked. “My, my.”

  “Don’t my,my me!” Victoria said. “Karen, I tell you, there’s nothing to gossip about here.”

  “So you say,” Karen said with a laugh. “I like him anyway. He’s a good man.”

  “He is a good man, and we are only good friends,” Victoria said firmly.

  “I’ve heard that plenty of times before,” Karen said. “Next thing I know, people are heading up the altar.”

  “I’ve got no time,” Victoria said. “I’ll see you in the evening, Karen.”

  “Say hi to Randy for me, Vic!”

  Victoria shook her head and rushed to the café. The morning shift was so packed with hungry customers that Victoria barely had time to breathe. It was only in the afternoon shift that things started slowing down.

  “Hey, Amanda,” Victoria smiled as Amanda entered the café with Ida at around 2 pm.

  “Hey, Vic,” Amanda said. “Can we get two strawberry milkshakes, one ham sandwich for Ida, and a pastrami-on-rye for me?”

  “Coming right up,” Victoria said. “How’s it going, ladies? Been doing some shopping today?”

  “We’re looking at color combinations,” Ida said a bit grumpily. “I wanted to wear bright red lipstick, but Amanda won’t let me.”

  “Ida dearest, bright red lipstick just won’t look very good in a wedding,” Amanda said. “We have to wear something a little soberer. A Mint dress, and frosty pink lipstick, how about that?”

  “I want bright red,” Ida said, sticking her lower lip out.

  “Well, we’ll talk about that later. I’m going to forego the traditional white dress and wear a pale pastel shade I think.” Amanda said. “But I don’t know.”

  “Well, we’ve got to go dress shopping soon,” Victoria smiled. “I can’t wait, personally.”

  “Same here.” Amanda hugged herself and beamed. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun.”

  “For you, maybe,” Ida said, biting her lip. She took a long, loud slurp of her milkshake.

  Both Amanda and Victoria looked at her, then at each other. Victoria gave a little nod to Amanda.

  “Well, I’m sorry that you have that attitude, Ida, but it’s not very fair, is it? Just because I think bright red lipstick will be inappropriate, you’re...”

  “It’s all I want,” Ida said, her voice pitching higher. “It’s the one thing I want, and you won’t let me. I hate you!”

  “Ida!” Amanda looked down at her, shocked. “Ida, come on.”

  “Amanda, why don’t you take a small walk?” Victoria suggested. “I can talk to Ida for you.”

  “No, this is something she and I have to solve on our own.”

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” Ida said, cuttingly. “I don’t want to even see your face! Just leave me alone!”

  Amanda nodded. “Alright, I’m going to take a walk. You can stay here and finish your milkshake. Then we’re going to go home and talk about what happened, alright?” she put a hand on Ida’s shoulders. “I love you, kiddo. I know this isn’t easy for you. I know it’s just been you and your dad so far, and you’re maybe a little scared of the change. But I promise we’ll make it work.”

  Ida kept her eyes straight ahead, ignoring Amanda, until she heard the door clang, signaling Amanda had left. Then, she put her head down on her shoulders and sobbed.

  Victoria put a hand on the girl’s hair, and patted it, feeling glad that the afternoon slowdown meant no one else was in the café. Linda, the waitress, gave Victoria a look, but Victoria shook her head, blinked slowly, and inclined her head, giving a universal look for, “I’ll handle this.”

  “Ida. You can talk to me.” Victoria said.

  “It’s not fair,” Ida said. “I don’t even have a picture of my mom. Dad didn’t keep any because he said it makes him too upset. All I have is the memory of her red lipstick, and now I’m not even allowed to bring that into the wedding.”

  “Is that why you’re insisting on red?” Victoria asked, shocked. “Well, Ida, have you told Amanda this?”

  “It’s my memory. I don’t want to share it with her.” Ida said. “Well, not yet.”

  “I think you should,” Victoria said kindly. “It might help a lot.”

  The door clanged again, and Amanda was there. “Come on Ida.” She said. “Let’s go home, if you’ve calmed down a little bit.”

  Victoria gave Ida a hug. “Don’t worry.” She whispered. “Amanda will agree if you tell her your reasons.”

  She went up to Amanda. “Are you alright?”

  “I think so,” Amanda said. “It’s just been a really stressful week for us all. Ida’s been moody, I’ve been up to my ears in work, Steve’s been irritable all week too.”

  “Why?” Victoria asked.

  “Declan has refused to give Steve his check for the mosaic. Steve’s really upset about it. The money was really good, and we would have been able to plan a better wedding with it. Did Declan give you what he owed?”

  “LeeLee actually paid me herself,” Victoria said. “But I’m sorry to hear that. Will Steve be alright?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Amanda said. “He’s never one to worry overmuch about money. I’ve told him we’ll make it work somehow.”

  “By the way, I had a question to ask you. Did you know that LeeLee had a painting in her bedroom?”

  “Steve’s seen it.” Amanda nodded. “It’s a rare piece by Wilmagelda Massini, isn’t it? Steve said it’s a shame that it's locked up like that in the house of an old lady who won’t ever appreciate the true depth of its art.”

  “Well, she might not have appreciated the art, but I think she would appreciate the dollar amount,” Victoria said. “Did it cost a lot?”

  “If it’s the painting Steve described, then it did,” Amanda said. “In the neighborhood of two to three million dollars.”

  “Wow!” Ida gasped. “Paintings sell for that much? Can I become an artist?”

  “Well, not every painting is that much, dear, and it’s all subjective,” Amanda said.

  “Steve wasn’t at the party that day, was he?” Victoria asked. “I wish he had been. I bet he would have remembered more details about the red coated girl. I talked to Karen about it, and she didn’t even remember seeing her.”

  “Steve was at the party,” Amanda said.

  “No, he wasn’t. I didn’t see him.” Victoria said.

  “He just came really late, because he had to finish a mural over at Hanson’s resort,” Amanda said.

  “Oh.” Victoria’s eyes went wide.

  “What is it?” Amanda asked.

  “Hanson!” Victoria said, throwing her apron down.

  “What?”

  “I have to make a call. Actually, I have to go,” Victoria called out to Linda, a waitress. “Linda, can you cover for me for an hour, please? I have to go do something sort of important.”

  “No problem,” Linda called.

  Jumping into her car, Victoria raced all the way to Hanson’s office, and despite a secretary’s protests, burst into his room.

  Hanson was talking on the phone. On seeing Victoria, his eyebrow
rose in surprise, and he hung up on the caller. “Well, this is interesting.” He said. “Are you interested in buying a timeshare, Victoria?”

  Victoria looked around at the secretary, and Hanson motioned to her to shut the door. Meekly, the secretary left.

  “Well?” He asked. “Oh, where are my manners? Have a seat. Can I get you a coffee? It’s not as good as the one in your café, but we’ll have to make do.”

  Victoria plopped herself on a chair, and said, “Hanson, you loved her. You told me you loved her the day before she died.”

  Hanson’s face seemed to go blank, and then livid. “You have no business coming here and talking nonsense.” He said. “I said no such thing, and you have no witnesses to back up your claim.”

  “Maybe not,” Victoria said. “But here’s the thing, Hanson, first, you came to the party with the girl in the red coat. Second, you fought with Declan. Third, you told me the next day that you’re in love with LeeLee.”

  “I never said I was in love,” Hanson said, then bit his tongue.

  “What happened to denial?” Victoria asked, smiling triumphantly.

  “I’ll deny it to anyone else,” Hanson said. “Just so you know. I have no interest in becoming the patsy who gets nailed for this case.”

  “You did love her, though, didn’t you?” Victoria asked.

  “I don’t know if I did,” Hanson said. “I know that I felt unhappy about her death, and I know that I have no interest in going to jail, just as I had no interest in killing her.”

  “Maybe you did, though,” Victoria said. “Maybe you confessed your love to her. Maybe she rebuffed you. Maybe your ego couldn’t handle it, and you killed her.”

  Hanson laughed. “You’re a fiction writer, aren’t you? That imagination of yours… it’s delightful.”

  “You’re acting cool now, Hanson, but when my witnesses get you, you’ll sing a different tune.”

  Hanson slammed his fist on the table. “I knew it. I shouldn’t have trusted that fool. He talked, didn’t he? I told him not to talk for his own good. I told him.”

  Victoria only smiled, her heart racing.

  “Declan is an idiot,” Hanson said. “Now he and I will both have some tough questions to answer.”

  Victoria stayed silent still, only nodding slightly, to encourage Hanson. Hopefully, the entire story would flow out now.

  “Look. I didn’t murder her,” Hanson said. “I swear to you I didn’t.” He said.

  “Why don’t you just tell me the truth then?” Victoria asked. “Your side of the story.”

  “I went to the house that morning to talk to LeeLee alone,” Hanson said. “She told me anything I wanted to say, I could say in the living room.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “No one,” Hanson said. “Well, Declan was somewhere in the house, I suppose, but we were alone. LeeLee had told all the workers to take a day off that morning because she had a headache. She said she only wanted to lie down all day, with no noise.”

  “Well?”

  “Well… I told her everything there was to tell.” Hanson said. “I told her I’d never felt a woman matched me the way she did. I told her I’d never wanted to change my ways for a woman until I met her. I told her I dated 20-year-old supermodels, and they couldn’t compare to her beauty.”

  “Wow,” Victoria said. “Quite eloquent.”

  “I got carried away, I suppose,” Hanson said. “I was feeling a little foolish after I’d finished. She was just sitting there with an impassive look on her face. Then, then something miraculous happened.”

  “What?”

  “She leaned over and kissed me,” Hanson said. He shut his eyes and covered them with his hands. “It was… a symphony. I’ve never experienced the world the way I did in those five seconds. All too soon, it was over. We broke apart, and Declan was standing there, his shoulders shaking, his eyes bloodshot with fury.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I wanted to run, but I was rooted to the spot,” Hanson said. “Then, LeeLee, in a very cool voice, said to him. Declan, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go have a beer with your friends, you’re going to come back in the evening, and when you do, everything will be fine. Alright? I was paralyzed with fear, convinced that Declan was going to be violent. Instead, he just obeyed her like a trained puppy. He walked out of the house without even shutting the door behind him. I heard he’s got an alibi. His friends can vouch that he was there until at least 9:00p.m. and that LeeLee’s time of death is estimated at 2:00 p.m..”

  “What happened then?”

  “LeeLee and I talked. She told me that she truly did love Declan, that my declaration of love had taken her by surprise. That the kiss she gave me was just a momentary thing and that I was to forget it. “After all, if a man speaks so well, he does deserve a little reward.” She said with a laugh. Then she said that she was going to try and make her relationship with Declan work. “When he comes back in the evening, we’ll both pretend this never happened,” LeeLee said. “He ignores my flaws, and I ignore his. At my age, I’ve come to believe that’s the best kind of relationship. As for you, Hanson, I’m very flattered, and if you’re the man I think you are, I believe you’ll keep pursuing me. But it’s no use. I’m marrying my Declan, come what may.” Well, there wasn’t much I could do after that.” Hanson said. “I decided to leave. She said she still had a splitting headache and went off to her bedroom. I closed the main door behind me, though I don’t think that locked it.”

  Victoria sat for a second, processing this. “You left the house at… one? One Thirty?”

  “Closer to One Thirty, I think,” Hanson said. “See, that’s the thing. As soon as I heard she’d been murdered the next morning, I went over to talk to Declan. He’d told the police nothing about me. He said that he’d been so shocked and traumatized that he actually forgot to tell them about me. I told him that was good.” Hanson took a deep breath. “The way I saw it if he wanted to inherit her estate, he had to prove that he was her common law spouse and that they were devoted only to each other. If I testified to a judge that I had kissed her that day, bam, it would wash his inheritance down the toilet. On the other hand, if he testified that I was with her until one thirty, all sorts of nastiness might rain down on me. So I told him it was best if he just stuck to the story he’d already told the cops, and leave me out of it. That way, his inheritance would be safe and sound.”

  “You never considered the possibility that Declan might have murdered her, did you?” Victoria asked.

  “Declan? Don’t be ridiculous. He had an alibi.” Hanson said.

  “Hanson, Declan could easily have slipped out of the bar. He could easily have driven back home, murdered LeeLee, and then gone back, and pretended nothing happened.” Victoria said. “Did it ever occur to you that you might need to testify about what had happened?”

  Hanson paled. “It didn’t, no.” He said. “I didn’t think it was Declan, and since I hadn’t seen who the murderer was, I didn’t want to be involved in the case.”

  “You’re involved now,” Victoria said. “I think you always have been. You told me that the Red-Coated girl approached you, didn’t she? At Marley’s bar?”

  “What about it?”

  “What did she want to talk to you about?”

  “She was mostly flirting with me,” Hanson said. “The more I think about it, the more I think she was just trying to make me take her to LeeLee’s.”

  “Last time, you told me she was talking to you about your ski-resort,” Victoria said.

  “Oh, well, I suppose it wasn’t exactly that.” Hanson squinted his face, trying to remember. “I was actually telling her about it. I told her about the mural I’m getting installed, and we started talking about art.”

  Victoria’s heart beat faster. Art! “Was that when you invited her to LeeLee’s?” She asked.

  “Yes, eventually. To be honest, I’d had a few drinks and the night’s conversation isn’t
very memorable. I just remember being attracted to her, and wanting to show off to LeeLee that I could date a woman so young and beautiful.” Hanson sighed.

  The secretary knocked on the door. “Hanson, it’s Steve.” She said, peeking from behind the slightly opened door. “He’s come about the money for the mural.”

  “Oh tell him to go away, I’ve got no time,” Hanson said. He turned back to Victoria, “The girl in the red coat was...”

  “You bet you’ve got the time,” Steve said, angrily making his way in. “Now look here Hanson...” He looked at Victoria, surprised. “Victoria? Aren’t you supposed to be at the café? Amanda was going to talk to you about...” He blinked. “Anyway, Hanson, I need that money, and I’m tired of being ripped off by you folks.”

  “Tomorrow,” Hanson said. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. We’re discussing important things here.”

  “I don’t care if you’re discussing state secrets, I...”

  Hanson sighed. “Victoria, I’ll come down to the police station after work so in about two hours. You better leave for now. You’re right, I have to tell Randolf about this.”

  Shaking his hand, Victoria left.

  Would this testimony be enough to implicate Declan, she wondered? She walked to the parking space and took a step back in shock. “Declan?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  He’d parked next to her car and was just sitting, staring blankly ahead, his fists clutched tightly around the steering wheel.

  “Hmm?” he looked up, surprised, and then blinked, as if coming back to himself. “Oh, I... I had come to talk to Hanson.” He said.

  “Hanson’s busy,” Victoria said. “You better get out of here, Declan. You don’t want to be here. You don’t look too good. Maybe you should see a doctor or a grief counselor.”

  “I’m…” Declan’s words were slow, distorted as if he had been drinking. Surreptitiously, Victoria leaned forward and sniffed. Yes. Alcohol fumes invaded her nostrils.

  “Well. I better be going then.” Declan said, looking up at her. “I don’t really know why I came here. I was just… driving around town, and I ended up here, somehow.”