Death of the Couch Potato's Wife: Cozy Christian Mysteries (Women Sleuth, Female Detective Suspense) (4 page)

Chapter 4

Despite my earlier bravado, I couldn’t ignore the tremble that shook me for the rest of the day. I nestled onto the couch and tried breathing exercises before Kent got home so he wouldn’t see my fear and ask about it. After all, the note said I couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Kent. But how exactly would someone know if I did tell him?

That led me to one conclusion and one conclusion only. Whoever had sent that note was not only a psychopath, but stupid.

However, psycho and stupid were still good reasons for me to tremble.

The front door opened. I checked the time. Eight p.m. Another long day. With each long day was the chasm in our marriage becoming wider and deeper? I hoped not.

“Look what I found on the porch.”

I turned around, clueless as to what he was talking about. My eyes widened when I spotted a bag of pork rinds and a DVD. I dove across the room and slapped both objects from his hands.

“What are you doing?” Kent stared at me like I’d grown two horns and a pointy tail.

“Pork rinds?” I raised my hands in the air and felt my nostrils flaring. Did I have to spell it out for him?

Realization washed over his face. “Candace.”

“Yeah. Death by pork rinds. Not a good way to go, in my opinion.”

“It wasn’t the pork rinds that killed—” He paused and shook his head.

That was Kent. Always logical. Even at times when logic had no place—like times when my emotions could dropkick his reasoning and take it out in two seconds flat.

His gaze stopped on something on the floor. “What’s with the DVD?”

My throat went dry as I thought about it. “Should we see?”

“I suppose we should. Maybe this is just a twisted misunderstanding.”

“Twisted misunderstanding. Of course.”

Only my husband would think that. Normal husbands would be pulling out shotguns. Okay, at the very least they’d be calling out someone to install a home alarm system.

We walked toward the DVD player. Each step caused my heart to race. Kent seemed as calm as the lake behind our house on a windless day as he slipped in the disc. I sat back on the couch, trying to appear nonchalant. But my fingers gave me away. They wouldn’t stay still. They twisted and picked at hangnails, and my knuckles suddenly needed to be cracked.

A grainy picture came on our TV screen. I squinted, trying to determine what I was watching.

That’s when I realized I was watching me.

“What…?” Kent’s face wrinkled with concern and he leaned closer to the screen.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the TV. Sure enough, there I was, climbing into my SUV. When was that recorded? The video jumped in time and showed me pulling into the driveway. I walked to the back of my SUV and pulled out several bags of groceries.

Two days ago. That’s when I’d gone grocery shopping.

Someone had videotaped me coming and going, and I’d been clueless.

Even more disturbing? Based on the camera angle, whoever had videotaped me seemed to be positioned inside the Flynns’ house.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.” Kent and I looked at each other before he shook his head and picked up the phone. “I’m calling the police.”

The next day, bags hung deep under my eyes. A night of contemplating who’d been watching you and videotaping you and was now threatening you for unknown reasons could do that to a girl. Chief Romeo’s promise last night to look into the mysterious DVD brought me little comfort.

After drinking four cups of coffee, I felt a little better. More awake, at least.

Just as I turned the shower on to get ready for the day, the doorbell rang. Probably Babe. Being neighborly, no doubt. I turned the water off. Conversations with Babe could take awhile.

So, with my hair flying out from the clip holding it back from my face and my faded pink bathrobe wrapped around me in the most unflattering way, I opened the door.

There stood Donna and Tiara, grinning with their picture- perfect hair and makeup. Did these two ever not look put together and camera ready? I’d been like that when I worked a nine-to- five job, but now that my main job was scrubbing toilets, sweats and T-shirts would do.

I pulled my bathrobe tighter and forced a smile. “Good morning.”

“I hope we didn’t catch you at a bad time.” Donna extended a basket of muffins. “I thought a few homemade goodies might cheer you up.”

That was Donna for you—always proper, polite and the perfect housewife. With her petite features and striking auburn hair, she was the essence of a suburban socialite.

“Thanks. That’s kind of you.”

“We wanted to check and see how you were doing,” Tiara offered. She stood nearly six feet tall, willowy, and had strong features that made me wonder if she’d been a model in her younger days. Her hair was cut stylishly short, and her ebony skin was flawless. “That was quite a scare you had.”

I realized I was being rude by not inviting them inside out of the cold. Hesitantly, I stepped back and extended my arm. “Please, come in.”

Usually, people who cared too much about appearances annoyed me, but Donna and Tiara were the neighborhood equivalent of the cool crowd in high school. If you got in with them, you had an instant circle of friends. I could use friends right now. I mean, sure, I had Babe. I loved Babe. But I could use other friends as well. And Donna and Tiara were beginning to see me in too many less-than-stellar moments.

My neighbors trotted inside, shoving the muffins in my hands as they passed.

“Would you like some coffee? Tea?” I asked, closing the front door and the only hope of maintaining my dignity.

“I would love coffee. Do you mind?” Tiara asked.

Donna smiled sweetly. “Me too.”

I’d just started brewing another pot. I got down two mugs and filled them to my neighbor’s specifications. I glanced at the muffins and reached for one. My hand froze mid-air. What if they were poisoned? I didn’t want to think the worst of my two neighbors, but I didn’t know whom I could trust. After a moment of contemplation, I grabbed a tray and loaded it up with the coffee and then placed the muffins there. I would wait for one of them to eat one before I did.

This would be the reality of my life until the killer was behind bars.

I forced a smile as I hurried back into the living room. The two ladies stopped whispering when I walked into the room and my self-consciousness soared. I knew they had been gossiping, I just didn’t know who their subject of the day was. Most likely me.

I tucked a hair behind my ear and set my coffee onto a side table. “Everything okay with both of you lately?”

They nodded in sync.

“We really just wanted to check on you.” Tiara took a sip of her coffee, her big eyes peering over the rim of the mug. They’d both passed on the muffins. That meant I did, too. I’d toss them into the trash after my neighbors left. “How are you doing, sweetie?”

I remembered the note in my mailbox—how could I forget?—and inwardly grimaced. Again, I couldn’t speak of the threat. I didn’t know whom I could trust with the information. “I can’t stop thinking about Candace.”

“Me either.” Tiara nodded vigorously. “I mean, who would have done something like that to her?”

I shrugged. “Good question.”

“People have all kinds of theories,” Donna chimed in. “It seems like everyone in town is a suspect.” Donna glanced at Tiara. “I mean, not us, of course.”

“Like whom? Who’s a suspect?”

Tiara and Donna looked at each other, as if they had to at least try and appear hesitant about spreading gossip. Finally, Tiara cleared her throat. When she met my gaze, I saw a twinkle in her eyes that exposed her excitement. “The word is the police brought Babe in for questioning this morning.”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “Babe? That’s ridiculous.”

Donna nodded quickly. “She takes sleeping pills. That’s what the police found on the pork rinds. Someone sedated Candace and then …”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. “I’m sure a lot of people take sleeping pills.” No way did Babe kill Candace. No way. For goodness sake, I had sleeping pills! I hadn’t taken them in a year, but I had them, just in case the nightmares came back. “Besides, why would Babe want Candace dead? She has no motive.”

“Babe’s a little—” Tiara twirled her index finger around her ear in the universal sign for “loopy.”

I had to defend my spunky neighbor, the first person who’d befriended me when I moved here. “She’s not loopy in a crazy way. She’s just different. She’s not afraid to be herself. I wish I had more of her gumption.”

Donna leaned forward, coffee perched in her hands. “Who do you think did it, Laura? Do you have any theories? I mean, you were the one who found her dead.”

I sat back. As much as I’d thought about it, I didn’t really have any ideas. I wish I did.

“It seems like everyone had a problem with Candace in one way or another,” I said.

“That’s for sure.” Tiara nodded.

I leaned forward. “How about the two of you? Did you ever get mad at her?”

Donna’s coffee slipped from her grasp and shattered all over the wood floor.

“Oh dear!” She rushed to her feet and stared at the mess. “What have I done?”

I sprang into action, guilt assaulting me that I’d made her uncomfortable enough to react like this. “It’s no problem, Donna. Those mugs were old anyway. Let me just get some paper towels.”

“I don’t know why I’m so clumsy lately.”

I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the whole roll.

I returned in time to see Tiara pat Donna’s back. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, honey. Anyone in your situation would be jittery.”

What was Donna stressed out about? I wondered. Maybe trying to balance her blended family: two teenagers of her own, and two stepchildren.

Or was she stressed out because she murdered Candace? She did live right next door, and our mailboxes were side by side. She could have easily slipped the note inside my box without anyone noticing.

I shoved the thought aside and began soaking up coffee. Donna kneeled to help, but I shooed her back to the couch. “Don’t worry about it. Besides, I don’t want you to stain your khakis.”

“You’re such a sweetie, Laura. I’m sorry you’re mixed up in this whole mess.”

I stopped sloshing the paper towels from the floor. “What do you mean?”

“We all know that it wasn’t your idea to go into Candace’s house. Babe coerced you, probably to make you look guilty and take the blame off of herself.”

“Babe didn’t kill Candace,” I repeated, making a mound of wet paper towels on the floor. “The idea is ridiculous.”

Tiara shrugged in a way that clearly stated she thought I was wrong. “Here, let me throw those away for you, sweetie. Then we’ve really got to be going.” She swooped up the paper towels and went into my kitchen before I could object.

Donna reached into her purse and handed a plastic package to me. “Magic Wipes. They clean up anything. Keep the whole package. It’s the least I can do.”

After I took the wipes, she and Tiara looped arms.

“Let us know if we can do anything for you,” Donna said.

“Of course.” I stood and saw two brown blotches on my robe. Great. I wouldn’t be winning any “most put together” contests. “Thanks for the muffins.”

“We’ll see you tonight at the association meeting.” Tiara tinkled her manicured fingertips in the air.

That was right. The meeting was tonight. I’d almost forgotten in all of the craziness.

Who knew what kind of speculation I’d hear there.

Maybe enough to figure out who’d sent me that threatening note.

Chapter 5

“The best advice I can give everyone here tonight is to lock your doors, don’t eat pork rinds, and report any suspicious behavior.” Harry stood at the podium on the stage of the aptly named Boring High School, and nodded repeatedly to the large turnout of concerned citizens seated in the hard wooden seats. Harry appeared to be trying to make eye contact with everyone at the association meeting to drive home his point. His over-the- top antics were enough to make me want to burst out laughing. I didn’t, of course, because death was no laughing matter.

But with safety tips like those, I could have stayed home and still been all the wiser. Organizing my sock drawer seemed more appealing than this waste of time.

Besides, I could very well be the next corpse found here in the ‘burbs. Someone wanted me either dead or quiet, and to keep me quiet I’d probably have to be dead. My odds weren’t looking good.

Awkward silence fell over the auditorium. Finally, Hillary stood from her seat at the side of the stage, made her way to the podium, and cleared her throat.

Come on, Hillary. Don’t do it. Don’t show your prickly side.

“Thank you, Harry, for that groundbreaking advice.” Her cheeks reddened.

The start of a smile tugged at my lips. On second thought, this was much more entertaining than organizing my sock drawer. These were the kind of uncomfortable moments that were usually reserved for reality TV.

Hillary tugged at the collar of her navy blue suit. “Does anyone have any questions?”

The silence did a 180. Suddenly, everyone began talking at once as hands shot in the air.

“Do the police know who did this?”

“How did Candace die?”

“Does anyone know where Jerry is?”

“Are we really safe?”

Hillary held up her hands. “One at a time, please!”

It was a moment for the history books. Hillary was losing her precious control. Kent and I looked at each other and grinned. That was one thing I had to give Hillary credit for: Our mutual disdain for her had pulled us closer together.

“Do the police have any suspects? Probably a city slicker,” Emma Jean theorized. Emma Jean’s family went back a hundred years in this town. For Emma Jean, newcomers weren’t welcome in sweet little Boring. We were corrupt—and, as she often liked to say, litterers.

Harry shook his head. “The police aren’t sharing any theories as to who they feel is guilty. But they do assure me that they’re on top of this investigation.”

More than likely, they’d told him to mind his own business.

“Are we safe? I mean, really safe, because I haven’t been sleeping at night, I’m so worried that someone’s going to get me too!” Tiara knitted her eyebrows together, looking much younger than her thirty-eight years.

Harry pushed his chest out further, and the Neighborhood Watch emblem on his knit shirt caught my attention. He must have a closetful of those shirts, one for each day of the week. “We can’t live in fear. We have to resume our normal lives. After all, there’s no evidence that would lead authorities to think that this is the work of a serial killer.”

“A serial killer!” Pandemonium exploded again.

Hillary’s face turned red, and her eyes shot daggers at Harry. “I’m sure this was a crime of association. Nobody has anything to worry about!”

“How can you be sure? Did the police tell you that?”

“I’ve got children to think about! Speculation just isn’t good enough.”

“I moved here because it was supposed to be safe.”

Hillary looked speechless. The gavel dangled in her hands, and her bottom lip dropped slightly.

An idea struck. Before I lost courage, I stood up and rubbed my hands on my slacks. “I have an idea, everyone.”

Silence. All eyes zeroed in on me.

I swallowed and glanced quickly at Kent, who stared at me with wide, questioning eyes. I turned my gaze back to the crowd around me. “Why don’t we add more people to our Neighborhood Watch program? Harry does a great job, but it’s really too much work for just one person. We need to have a constant patrol, someone who can be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.”

Noise erupted.

“Great idea.”

“Let’s do it.”

“It’s the perfect solution.”

I could tell by looking at Harry that I’d just stepped on his toes. The Neighborhood Watch was his territory. I waited for his reaction. With the entire association around me, he couldn’t throw much of a temper tantrum.

He nodded slowly, and his gaze never left me. It was as if he tried to send me a silent message, and I got it loud and clear: He did not appreciate my suggestion.

Finally, he said, “I guess it couldn’t hurt to expand the program—at least until this killer is behind bars. The problem is, who’s going to help? Everyone here has families, or they work full-time.”

I slowly brought my hand up. “I will.”

I felt Kent’s sharp gaze on me.

“I mean, I’m not working right now. It makes sense that I should help.”

“You have no experience with something like this!” Kent whispered. “It could be dangerous being out there by yourself.”

Babe stood. “I’ll help her. We can be partners.” She grinned widely at me.

I couldn’t help but smile back, even though the thought of working with Babe was enough to make my blood pressure skyrocket. Babe was likely to find trouble and jump into the middle of it instead of calmly calling the authorities.

Besides, wasn’t she a suspect? I needed to talk to her later about her questioning down at police headquarters.

Harry shook his head. “Two women doing Neighborhood Watch? I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Aren’t there any men who can volunteer?” He looked back to the crowd.

“A woman can do this job just as well as a man!” Hillary cried. “I resent that comment, Harry.”

He held up his hands in protest. “All right, all right. I guess since there’d be two of you, I’d feel better about it.” Harry stared at us, his brows furrowed in thought. “I’ll have to train you. This isn’t a position for the weak.”

Babe held up those three fingers again. “Weak isn’t in my vocabulary.”

Everyone looked at me.

“And I’m a city slicker. You know how we are.”

Everyone nodded, as if that response satisfied them.

Hillary slammed her gavel onto her podium. “It’s settled then. Laura and Babe will join our Neighborhood Watch. We’ll have someone on duty at all times. This neighborhood will be safe!”

“Neighborhood Watch, huh?” Kent ran the razor down his cheek, plowing a puff of shaving cream, after we returned home from the meeting. He couldn’t stand to go to bed with prickles on his face. It was one of his little quirks. “You never fail to surprise me. I never thought you’d be interested in something like that.”

I sat in bed and continued to rub lotion over my hands. “I just want to do my part to contribute to the community. I think it will go a long way as far as establishing trust. Don’t you?”

His eyebrows went up as he considered it. He moved the razor under his nose. “You’re probably right. I just worry about you. There is a killer out there. And someone did leave pork rinds on our porch, not to mention that creepy DVD.”

I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. In reality, this was the perfect excuse to get involved in this case. I had to find out who was threatening my husband and me before we both ended up six feet under.

“I’ll just be doing patrol. I have no intention of tracking down any killers or taking the law into my own hands. I’m not Harry.” My throat burned as the words left my lips. I didn’t lie to Kent. Until today. But I couldn’t tell him about the note. What if—just what if—whoever wrote that note was not only videotaping me, but also monitoring my conversations? I felt like a loon even thinking the thought. But right now I knew that the killer was three things: psycho, stupid, and technologically-savvy.

“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s Babe. The woman has no fear.”

I couldn’t argue. Apparently the police had questioned her for three hours. Did she fret? Of course not. She enjoyed telling everyone, detail by detail, how the police had practically tortured her to get information. It had been worse than the interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay, only they didn’t use water torture. Instead, they used the good cop/bad cop routine.

Apparently, Babe’s fingerprints had been found on the bag of pork rinds. She claimed she contemplated buying them at the General Store last week, then proceeded to telling an agonizingly long story about how she put them in her shopping cart, then put them back on the shelf, and repeated the process numerous times before deciding on Funyuns instead. Sadly, I believed her.

Kent climbed in bed beside me and turned on the TV. The theme song from CSI blared into the room. Using the remote, he set the timer for an hour before placing the controls back onto the nightstand. He kissed my forehead. “Goodnight, honey.”

I bit back a frown. “Good night.”

Next thing, we’d have Lucy and Ricky Ricardo beds.

Our marriage was not going according to the script I’d envisioned. I’d dreamed of being
Hart to Hart
. Instead, we were turning into that couple from the sitcom
Mad About You
—you know, the one about the crazy-in-love couple who almost gets divorced at the end of the series?

My mom had always warned me that my storybook fantasies would only disappoint me. I’d grown up watching too many Disney movies and reading too many fairytales. Marriage wasn’t like that.

My self-talk did nothing to lift to my spirits.

I had to think about something else. Candace seemed a good option.

I turned over in bed, trying to get comfortable. What had happened to my friend? Who could have killed her? Someone I knew? I couldn’t stop considering the possibilities. It could have been anyone: one of my neighbors, someone I went to church with, a respected member of the community. The possibilities were endless.

And what did dear, sweet Kent know about it?

There my thoughts went back to Kent. We used to not have any secrets. Maybe that was our problem now—we both had too many secrets, too many separate interests. Would one of those secrets end up killing us?

I sighed, and tuned out the sound of the television.

Kent was right. This whole investigation was none of my business.

Of course it was my business. Candace was my friend. I was nothing if not loyal.

That was the conclusion I’d come to by the next morning. I’d tried to ignore my obsession with my neighbor’s murder. Really. But I had a new reason to wake up each morning now in suburbia: murder.

As morbid as that sounded, I’d accept that reality in my life. It beat the other alternatives—that I was bored to death or clinically depressed.

That morning, for example, I had cleaned the floors, dusted the entire house, and reorganized the bathroom closet—an obvious sign of desperation. I moved one step beyond desperation and into insanity when the highlight of my hour was walking around the house while balancing five folded towels on my head. Being a housewife just wasn’t my gig.

But solving a murder and saving my marriage just might be. I was walking to my home office to retrieve a pen and paper—to write out a list of suspects—when I heard a loud thud in the backyard.