Death by Coffee (20 page)

Could she have cheated on Brendon with Raymond just to get back at him? People have done worse, I was sure, though to go that far . . . it defied belief.

I’d been walking aimlessly back toward Death by Coffee, turning it all slowly over in my head. No matter how many ways I looked at it, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe Heidi would have slept with Raymond Lawyer. Even Tessa didn’t think Heidi would have done it.

But if not Raymond, then who?

A crash brought me out of my reverie. It was followed by a startled scream.

I looked up, worried, as another crash sounded, this one louder than the first. It was followed by an earsplitting scream that just about stopped my heart. I was only a few yards away from Death by Coffee. The sounds had come from there.

Dropping the sucker Jules had given me, I broke into a run, certain my entire world was about to come crashing down around my head.

24

I had to push my way through the front door, which was hanging open. People were crowding around, trying to see inside. Where did all these people come from? They sure as heck weren’t buying coffee at the time.

Heart hammering, I shoved past a woman who was taking up the entire doorway. She grunted as I elbowed past her and then pushed me hard on the back shoulder. I lost my balance and staggered inside to crash against a table. A chair toppled over, just as another crash sounded from the bookstore portion of the store.

There were only a handful of people actually
in
Death by Coffee. They were all on their feet, looking up toward where the crashes were coming from. There was a growl, followed by a scream that had me scrambling back to my feet.

I was terrified at what I’d find, once up those few stairs. Would Vicki be lying there, mouth frothing from some poison the killer had managed to spread across the pages of a book? Or perhaps she’d have a bookmark shoved through her eye or balled up pages in her mouth. Instead of helping, the people of Pine Hills were standing around and laughing.

I slowed halfway to the stairs.
They’re laughing?

It took me a moment to realize the screams I heard weren’t agonizing. There was a howl, followed by a hiss, and then Vicki yelping in pain. “Trouble!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

My heart, which had just about thumped its way clear through my chest, settled to a more manageable speed. No one was lying dead upstairs—at least, not yet. I had a feeling if Vicki caught hold of her cat, there very well might be a feline fatality soon enough.

I hurried up the couple of stairs and froze as I scanned the mess. Bookshelves lay toppled to the floor. Books were scattered every which way, many open with pages bent beneath them. An older woman stood by the stairs, one hand over her mouth, the other over her heart. She looked at me wide-eyed as I came to a stop next to her.

“What happened?” I asked, out of breath after my short run.

“The cat,” the woman said. “It’s gone crazy!”

That didn’t tell me anything. Both Trouble and Misfit were born crazy.

“Vicki?” I called. I thought I saw her head duck down, which was followed by a howl and a hiss. A black-and-white shape darted across the room, causing a couple more books to fall from their shelves.

“Argh!”
Vicki cried. “I’m going to rip off your claws, you demon!”

“Sorry,” I told the old lady. “If you were interested in buying a book, I’d come back tomorrow.” I smiled at her before turning back toward the destruction. I picked my way through the scattered books, mentally calculating how much damage the cat had caused. My initial tallies weren’t pretty.

“Vicki?” She hadn’t come up from where I’d last seen her.

“Over here,” she grumbled. A hand fluttered up between a pair of fallen shelves and then fell back to the floor with a thump.

I stepped over an old Western, which was now missing its cover, and found Vicki lying facedown on the floor. Her arms were covered in tiny little scratches. There was little blood, thank goodness, but the marks would show for days.

“You okay?” I asked, scanning the area. The cat must have gone completely bonkers. A half-dozen shelves were toppled and two more were leaning against one another, their books spilled out between them. Only the two wire racks by the stairs had managed to remain upright. The rest were buried beneath the bookshelves somewhere.

Vicki grumbled something into the floorboards before pushing her way to her feet. She had a scratch across her chin, yet it didn’t detract from her beauty. I swear, that girl could run full force into a wall, shatter her nose and bust her lip, and she would still be the prettiest girl in the room.

Jealous? Me? Never.

“What happened?” I asked, surveying the room. “How could one cat do so much damage?”

She huffed. “It wasn’t just Trouble,” she said, wiping herself down. She looked around with a grimace. “Do you remember that guy who complained about cat allergies a few days ago?”

“Yeah.”

“He came back.”

I glanced around, but didn’t see him. “Did he sneeze the shelves over?”

Vicki gave me a flat look. “Of course not. He came in for a book, started complaining about cats, which only caused Trouble to rub up against his leg. I swear cats know. The guy jumped like he’d been electrocuted, landed on Trouble’s tail, and then began flailing all over the place like he’d stepped on a land mine. He knocked over the first shelf, which sent Trouble into panic mode. Between trying to settle the guy down and catch the damn cat, this happened.” She spread her arms as if to encompass the store.

“Wow,” I said, trying hard not to laugh. “Of all things . . . Really? Wow.”

“Shut up.”

I snorted. “What happened to Allergy Man?”

“He started squawking about never coming back, tripped over his own two feet, and went headfirst down the stairs, where he wailed about suing.” Vicki sighed. “I suppose we’ll be hearing from his lawyer soon enough.”

That wiped the smile from my face. As if times weren’t hard enough already—now this!

“Is Trouble okay?” He’d gotten lost in the mess somewhere, presumably to lick his wounds.

Vicki shrugged and picked up a few books to reshelve them. “I don’t know. That’s why I was trying to catch him. Besides, I don’t want him scratching up the pages. You know how he gets with paper lying around.”

Oh, how I knew. Misfit was the same. If you left a bare page lying around the house, he’d be on it in a second, either napping or ripping it into tiny little shreds. I could only imagine what he’d do in a place like this with books everywhere.

“You go find the cat,” I said, picking up a few books of my own. “I’ll take care of this.”

Vicki hesitated, then nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I really screwed up this time.” She slunk away to find Trouble before I could respond.

Thankfully, the bookshelves weren’t that heavy. I went about righting them before worrying about the books. The shelves were made from cheap plywood and stood only four feet tall. We’d saved some money by going with the cheaper bookshelves. Maybe if we’d spent more and had gone with the more expensive, heavier shelves, they wouldn’t have gone crashing down like dominoes.

I only had to stop twice to wait on someone while I worked. While people had gathered to watch the scene, they weren’t all that interested in getting something to drink afterward. Even Rita and the writing group were gone, leaving the place depressingly empty.

I was replacing books in the sci-fi section when Vicki returned, petting Trouble. The cat actually looked contented, like this was the sort of thing he lived for. I could hear his purr coming from across the room and considered throwing a book at him just to make him stop. There was nothing funny about this anymore.

“This is a disaster,” Vicki said, leaning carefully on a recently righted shelf. It wobbled ever so slightly. “I’m really starting to think you were right this entire time. This was a bad idea.”

“We’ll get through this,” I said, though I really didn’t feel it. It seemed like everything was falling apart around us. Plus, no matter what we did to stop it, things kept getting worse.

Vicki sniffed, causing me to straighten, stunned. She was actually crying. I don’t think I’d ever seen her cry before. She was always so good at keeping on the smiling face, even when things were at their worst. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. I shoved the book I was holding absently onto a shelf and went over to stand next to her. “It’s just a few books.”

“I know.” She wiped angrily at her eyes. “I just keep thinking that if things don’t get better soon, I’m going to have to go back to California. My parents will force me to get an acting job and I’ll have to go on some special diet, get Botox, maybe a boob job, and then make some vapid friends, who really don’t care a thing about me, just so I can impress some Hollywood producer.” A terrified look passed over her face. “Do you think those rumors about having to sleep your way to the top are true? I really don’t want to have to go through that.”

“You won’t,” I said. “We’ll make this work.”

She snorted a laugh, somehow making it sound sexy. “Funny how we’ve sort of swapped places. Didn’t I say something like that just the other day?”

I smiled. “You did.” The smile slipped away quickly. “And I still am worried.”

“Gee, thanks.” She gave me a crooked grin. “That makes me feel
so
much better.”

I ran a hand over Trouble’s head. He glared at me and stopped purring. I think I actually saw him flex his claws. I returned my hand to myself.

“I’m just being honest,” I said, eyeing the cat warily. “But it’s okay to be worried. We’ll muddle through this, and things will work out. Even if I have to take another loan from Dad, or ask him to come down to do some event, we’ll get through this.”

I shuddered at the thought of asking my dad for anything else. I’d rather live on the streets, alone and dirty, than beg from him, though I knew he’d leap to help. I’d much rather go to Raymond Lawyer and ask him for some money than impose on my dad any more than I already had.

Of course, thinking of Mr. Lawyer made me think of what Tessa had said. Could Heidi really have slept with her husband’s father? It was just so icky and yucky and vomit worthy. I couldn’t imagine it....

“We best get this cleaned up before someone actually wants to come in and buy something.” Vicki set Trouble onto the floor. He wound his way around her legs and then darted off, presumably to find something new to destroy. “I hope there isn’t too much damage.”

Turned out, the damage to the books was lighter than I’d expected. Only eight books were beyond repair. Two dozen had bent pages, but they’d be fine tucked back onto the shelves. Five were bent up enough that we set them onto the counter with a
CLEARANCE
sign over them. All in all, we weren’t out much money and maybe the excitement caused by the cat would bring a few people back in the hopes of catching a replay.

It took most of the day to put everything to rights. Every now and again, I’d think of Raymond or Heidi or one of the other unfriendly people involved in Brendon’s death, but I never got past the initial thoughts. I had too much to do.

By the time we were done and Trouble was back to licking his privates on the tables, it was near closing time. How could such a big mess happen from such a small incident? It had looked like a stampede of elephants had rushed through the place, followed by a handful of mischievous monkeys.

Vicki and I slumped behind the counter, actually happy we weren’t any busier than usual. I don’t think either of us had the energy to wait on someone, let alone fill an order. Physical labor was not my thing; even Vicki looked exhausted and a little disheveled.

Of course, she still looked the part of a beauty queen. I, on the other hand, looked as haggard as I felt.

“Think we should close up early?” Vicki asked. She looked down at her nails. They were perfect, as always. Only the tiny cat scratches detracted from her hands in any way.

I winced as I picked at a splinter I’d managed to get from one of the shelves. One of my nails had bent and I had at least a dozen paper cuts. I might as well have stuck my hand in a shredder. It might have done less damage.

“I suppose,” I said with a sigh. There were only two people left in the store. Even they looked tired and bored as they sipped their coffee.

It didn’t take much wrangling to clear the room and lock up. Vicki had a much easier time catching Trouble and getting him into his carrier than she’d had earlier. It wasn’t quite five, but it was close enough.

“See you tomorrow?” she asked as we stepped outside. She sounded genuinely curious, as if she didn’t quite believe I’d show. That, of course, made me feel bad.

“Bright and early.” I tried on a smile, decided it didn’t feel right, and let it fall away with a yawn. “If I can drag myself out of bed, that is.”

Vicki laughed. “Well, I’ll see you then.”

She sauntered away and I felt a pang of regret. Was I holding her back? If it wasn’t for me, she might be a star right now, rich and famous with a super sexy husband and millions of fans screaming her name everywhere she went. It was a life I’d never live. Without me, she might soar to heights she never believed possible.

I quickly realized I was just being dumb. This was the life Vicki wanted. Just because I was failing at it so spectacularly didn’t mean she would want to change anything.

I finished locking up, determined I’d work harder at making things right. No matter what happened, I swore to myself I wouldn’t let my best friend down.

25

“What is a six-letter word for ‘pest’?” I glanced over at Misfit, who was busy spreading crumbs across the countertop. I penciled in “misfit,” but I quickly erased it. I’d already tried to squeeze in “trouble” twice.

I’d thought I’d go straight to bed when I’d gotten home an hour before. However, as soon as I stepped through the doorway, my mind started to race. I really wanted to know whether or not Heidi had slept with Raymond Lawyer or if I was just grasping at rather weak straws. I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to sleep unless I knew.

But I wasn’t going to find out tonight. It might still be early, but I was pretty sure Regina Harper would be hovering around Heidi at home. The older woman would surely call the police the moment I showed my face and I doubted Chief Dalton would be able to keep me out of a jail cell this time.

So puzzles it was. I’d chosen crossword, thinking it would get my mind off things, yet it just wasn’t helping. At least I’d been smart enough to grab a pencil instead of a pen this time. I penciled in “Krissy” where I’d erased “misfit” and sighed.

Was that really what I was? I’d been making a pest of myself ever since I arrived in Pine Hills. By just being there, I’d irritated Judith and Eddie Banyon. Well, at least Judith. Eddie seemed okay with me—not that he’d ever show it in front of his wife. From first meeting I’d gotten on everyone else’s nerves in one way or the other. Was there anyone in town I hadn’t annoyed?

I put down my pencil and stood. My back ached from cleaning up Trouble’s mess earlier, and sitting at the counter wasn’t helping. I looked at the mess Misfit had left me and turned away. I didn’t have the energy to clean anything else up tonight. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d actually decide to eat some of the treat crumbs if I left them there long enough.

Picking up my cell phone, I went to sit down on the couch. I sank down with a near-contented sigh. I clicked on the Facebook app, even though I’d much rather use the full site. I had yet to unpack my laptop, so it was either this or nothing.

I poked at the
STATUS
button and stared at the prompt: What’s on your mind?

“A whole lot of things, Mr. Phone,” I said, wearily. I thought about what to say for a few minutes and then carefully tapped in, Hope things work themselves out soon. I hit
ENTER
.

The post was vague, but vague was good. I liked vague. Vague would earn me a few kind words from friends I never see anymore, as well as people I’ve never met in my life. I’d once been addicted to a few Facebook games a couple of years back and never bothered to remove any of the “friends” I’d earned from it when I quit. Maybe I’d take care of it sometime later if I ran out of mindless things to do.

I started to close the app when a thought hit me.

Thoughts began zooming though my head. What about Raymond Lawyer? Would he be so dumb as to put Dating my son’s daughter as his relationship status? What about Mason? I very well might learn a lot about the family if I looked them up on Facebook. People weren’t always careful about what they put there.

I sat staring at the tiny screen, contemplating the ramifications of what I was thinking of doing. There was no way they’d know I was looking. What harm could there be in simply typing in their names and looking at their info? It wasn’t like I was looking at anything others couldn’t see. If they didn’t want me to know something about themselves, then they shouldn’t have put it on Facebook, where anyone in the world could access it.

“Come on, phone, don’t fail me now.”

I started with Raymond Lawyer, since he was the head of the family. Unsurprisingly, the old man didn’t seem to be on Facebook. While my dad and grandparents were connected online, not everyone in the older generations was. It appeared Raymond was one of those who didn’t view social media as a necessary part of his life. Or at least, he couldn’t be bothered with it.

I moved on to Mason Lawyer. He had a page, but he had all of two friends and hadn’t appeared ever to have made a post, let alone filled in any of his info. I’m guessing someone talked him into joining—one of those two friends, perhaps—and he lost interest almost as soon as he got started.

Brendon came next. Maybe there was some evidence on the dead man’s account that would point to his killer. Could I really be so lucky that he’d made some posts about how he feared someone might be trying to kill him? Or better, named that person?

No such luck. There were men named Brendon Lawyer, but as far as I could tell, none of them were from Pine Hills.

“What’s wrong with these people?” I asked Misfit, who’d jumped up on the couch to curl up at my feet. He glanced at me with one eye and then resumed his slumber.

Didn’t the Lawyers believe in technology and staying connected with the rest of the world? They really should get up with the times.

I decided I’d try one more name in the hopes of coming up with something useful. I typed in Heidi Lawyer and there she was, the very first entry. I clicked her name, excited, but my hopes were dashed when I saw the minimal information. It appeared she’d set her privacy settings to show only the most basic of information. I’d have to be her friend to see more.

Grumbling to myself, I considered what to do. There was no way I was going to see the information without her accepting me as a friend. I seriously doubted she’d want the woman who’d been hounding her about her husband’s death stalking her online.

I happened to glance at her
FRIENDS
tab and clicked it on a whim. Maybe she was friends with her mother and I could check her page. Or perhaps I’d recognize a name that would trigger something that would put me on the tail of the actual killer.

As I began to scroll through the list, I began to realize something: There was no way Heidi could know all of these people. There had to be hundreds of friends on the list, many who didn’t appear to speak English. It was as if she randomly accepted every friend invite that came her way.

Or, like I’d once been, she was addicted to Facebook games.

Could it really be that easy?

I went back and sent a friend invite to Heidi. I stared at my phone and willed it to update. If she was accepting anyone and everyone, perhaps she wouldn’t even notice the latest person she’d accepted. Then again, did she even know my name? I didn’t recall telling her, though I might have done it when we’d met face-to-face for the first time. And just because I’d told her my name, it didn’t mean she’d remember it.

Time passed. No new friends were added.

I was about to give up and shut down the app when a new thought hit me—one that sent cold chills racing up and down my spine. My fingers trembled as I typed in another name, the most important of them all.

 

 

Sure enough, his face appeared, smiling at me from the tiny little box. I stared at it, heart pounding. Dare I click it? What if he left his site open so that anyone could see? I’d be able to look at every picture posted of him, read every post he’d made since he’d joined the site.

The thought of seeing vacation photos of Paul, shirtless, on the beach, tanned and grinning, had me sweating. There was no way I could resist that. I clicked his face with a trembling finger.

And there it was. Everything I could ever want to know about him, right there for me to see. I checked his
ABOUT
page and saw he’d lived his entire life in Pine Hills. His relationship status read
SINGLE
and I wondered how long ago a name had occupied that spot.

I thought of my own page and how Robert had once decorated my relationship status. Those days seemed so far away, it was almost as if it had happened to someone else. I kind of wished it had. That was another name that worked for pest, by the way: “Robert.”

Pushing the thought away, I began skimming Paul’s recent posts, hoping I’d see something about me there that wasn’t in relation to Brendon Lawyer’s murder. With the way things had been going lately, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest if I found a list of suspects—consisting of my name only—somewhere on his page.

I needn’t have worried about that. Apparently, Paul Dalton kept his work life separate from his online life. There wasn’t a mention of a single case or crime anywhere on the page. I wondered if perhaps there was a law against cops posting stuff like that on Facebook. I was pretty sure there had to be.

But while I didn’t see anything about Brendon’s death or any subsequent cases he might have been involved in, I did see one line that had my heart hammering, despite its vague nature.

 

 

That had to be about me, didn’t it? I quickly checked the date and time on the post and saw that it indeed was posted about the time he would have gotten home after our little jaunt into the Lawyer’s Insurance building.

Did that mean he liked me? If so, why hadn’t he searched me out as a friend on Facebook? I started panicking then, wondering if he’d made that post only to make his mom feel good. He might have hated every second he’d spent with me; and once I quit poking my nose into the Lawyer case, he’d never want to see me again.

Stop it,
I reprimanded myself. I wasn’t a teenage girl anymore.

Calmly I clicked the
FRIEND REQUEST
button on Paul’s page. Almost immediately I got a notification that a request had been accepted.

“He likes me!” I shouted at Misfit. The cat put a paw over his face and turned his head away from me, but I didn’t care. Paul Dalton actually liked me!

It was then I realized the little button still said:
FRIEND REQUEST SENT
. I clicked the notification button and found that no, it wasn’t Paul who’d accepted my request.

It was Heidi.

My excitement was replaced by a different sort of thrill. This was my chance at actually learning something about Heidi, something she might not have told me when we’d met. I clicked over to her page and started reading.

Every recent post was about her dead husband. She seemed genuinely upset about his death. She’d been flooded with sympathetic messages. People from Asia told her how sorry they were to hear of his passing; some from Germany wrote what I assumed were well wishes, though they were actually written in German. In a way it was touching, while scary at the same time. I didn’t like the idea of someone from so far away, whom I didn’t even know, knowing my personal information.

Then again, maybe she’d actually once traveled abroad and had met all of these people. I shouldn’t rush to judgment just because I didn’t understand or like something.

After skimming a few pages of posts, I turned to the one spot I hoped to learn something that would tell me more about her life. I doubted she was dumb enough to list the guy she cheated with under her relationship status, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

I clicked her
ABOUT
page and was met with disappointment.

There was sparse information there, and nothing about any sort of relationship, outside of it still listed her as
MARRIED
. I skimmed the information, anyway, and was about to close Facebook down and give up for the night when something caught my eye.

I was looking directly at Heidi Lawyer’s place of employment.

If I couldn’t go to her house to talk to her without Regina interfering, then why not go to where she worked? I found it unlikely that her mom would follow her all the way there, though I suppose they could work in the same place.

But what if she wasn’t at work when I went in? I was sure they’d given her time off after her husband’s death. Would she be back to work already? I know if it had been me, I would have taken a week off, if not more.

Knowing her mother, I thought that yeah, she very well might have gone back in, if only to get away from Regina.

Smiling, I wrote down the name of the building, figuring I’d check the address tomorrow. I glanced at the
MESSAGE
tab and thought about sending her a private message, asking her who it was she’d slept with, or at least if she’d be at work in the morning, but I decided it would be too tacky. This was something I needed to do face-to-face.

Closing Facebook, I rose, feeling much better than I had earlier. I might not be any closer to figuring out who killed Brendon, but I was at least doing
something.
That had to count for something, right?

“Come on, Misfit,” I said, stretching. I glanced at the clock and saw it was only ten till eight, but I was beat. “Time for bed.”

The orange fluffball leapt off the couch and raced into the bedroom ahead of me. I was excited about what I’d found, but couldn’t do anything about it until the morning. I needed a good night’s sleep, though I doubted I would get it. I was too wired for that.

Misfit was curled up, right where I normally slept. I considered pushing him to the side, but I decided I didn’t want to deal with the scratches that would earn me. I got changed for bed, slid in next to him, and then, surprising myself, drifted off into a restful sleep.