Assisted Murder (A Moose River Mystery Book 6) Read online

  The kids stepped out of the way and Gloria took the handles on the back of her chair and spun her toward the hallway. “Be right back,” she told us.

  “Bye, Grandma,” Jake said.

  She held up a hand as Gloria wheeled her off, like a queen waving to her royal subjects. I watched her go, then turned to the kids.

  “What did she say that made you all laugh?”

  They all tittered and smiled, and Sophie’s ears turned an alarming shade of pink.

  “What?” I demanded.

  Will grinned. “She said you both looked like you wet your pants, you were so nervous.”

  All four chuckled. Clearly, Grandma Billie had found a way to break the ice with the kids. Just embarrass their parents.

  “I was not nervous,” I told them.

  Judging from their expressions, not one of the kids believed me. I looked at Jake.

  He held up his hands, like he was afraid I might charge at him. “Tell that to Grandma.”

  FIVE

  “I can run in and get the keys,” I said.

  We'd left the clubhouse and Gloria drove us through the resort, pointing out the highlights – swimming pools, tennis courts, parks – until we'd pulled up in the driveway of her cute one-story ranch home. She'd had a rental car delivered to the home we were staying in, but mistakenly brought the keys back with her when she'd walked home. So we were stopping to pick them up before she dropped us at our place.

  Gloria smiled gratefully at me. “You are a dear. You don't mind?”

  I stood at the door of the bus. “Not at all.”

  I was anxious to get to the house, to unpack and get settled, and to let the kids do the same. Emily was dying to FaceTime with Andy, Will wanted to get his laptop connected, and both younger girls were eager to check out the small pool they knew was waiting for them in the backyard.

  Gloria rotated the handle next to the steering wheel and the doors opened. “They’re right on the kitchen counter. You can't miss them.” She picked up a small square box in the dash panel and pushed a button. The garage door started to move in front of us. “You can go in through there.”

  “I wanna come!” Grace said, standing up.

  “Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll just be a second. You can see Aunt Gloria’s house another time.”

  I hopped off the bus. The garage was nearly empty, save for a light blue Prius and several boxes stacked in the corner. The concrete floor looked as if it was swept and washed regularly. It was the opposite of our ancient, filthy, barely-standing garage back in Minnesota.

  I pushed open the door to the house. The inside smelled like lavender candles and Pine-Sol. I was in a small entryway with a tiled floor, complete with a stacking washer/dryer and a sparkling clean laundry sink. The room looked as clean as the garage. Sterile, almost.

  The entryway led into a longer hallway. The walls were lined with framed photos, a funky collection of sizes and frames. I spotted a couple of our family, several with Garrett, and the rest seemed to be of Gloria in warm places. It made me happy to know that she had images of us in our home. It was a connection to family, even if we didn't see her that often.

  The hallway emptied into an expansive living room with Polynesian-style furniture – rattan furniture with sunshine orange cushions, a glass topped table on what looked like bamboo legs, and several small, potted palms near the slider that opened to a small patio and yard outside. The wooden blinds were all open, letting the sunshine filter into the room.

  The living room was separated from the kitchen by a long bar. Stools that matched the living room furniture rested under the counter top. The like-new stainless steel appliances made me envious. I loved cooking, but we were still in the slo-mo process of updating our century-old kitchen in Minnesota. I longed for the space that Gloria had.

  I didn't see the keys on the bar top, so I walked around into the kitchen.

  And nearly tripped on a pair of feet.

  A woman about Gloria's age was flat on her back on the kitchen floor. She wore a blue and pink sundress and her long blondee hair looked as though it had started going gray a while ago. Her skin was tanned from the sun, mottled with age spots. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded together, resting on her stomach, like she'd lain down to take a nap. One small foot was bare, the other wearing a flat-soled sandal.

  “Uh, hello?” I said.

  She didn't move and a twinge pinched the inside of my stomach.

  I bent down. “Hello?”

  The icemaker in the fridge whirred, and I jumped. Ice cubes clinked down the chute and into the plastic holding bin. I glanced back at the woman lying on the floor.

  I watched her chest, hoping to see it rise and fall.

  It didn't.

  I stood, started to grab the rental keys I now saw on the counter, then stopped. I left them there, turned on my heel and hustled back out to the garage, the twinge now turning into something more like a stabbing feeling.

  “Uh, Gloria?” I said, sticking my head back into the bus.

  “Oh, could you not find them, dear?” she asked, a worried frown on her face as she hauled herself out of her seat. “Maybe I moved them.”

  “No, I found them,” I told her. I stole a quick glance at the kids and lowered my voice. “They're right by the dead woman on the floor.”

  SIX

  “Mom,” Will said. “I have a question.”

  I looked around at the police cars and gathering crowd. “What?”

  “Why does this always happen to you?”

  I turned my head slowly in his direction, making sure my eyes took on the appearance of daggers that were sharp enough to kill.

  He took the hint and walked over to his sisters, who were sitting on the curb. Emily was typing on her phone, probably texting Andy the latest developments, and both younger girls were sharing a pair of ear buds as they listened to music, seemingly unperturbed by the events unfolding around them. I was pretty sure they’d become immune to this type of thing.

  Gloria thought I was kidding when I told her there was a dead woman on the floor of her kitchen. When I assured her that I was not, she'd rushed past me out of the bus and ran into her home. The kids tried to rush out of the bus, too, but I held them at bay. When Gloria reemerged from the house, she had a phone to her ear and her hand over her mouth, like she couldn't believe what she'd just seen. Within five minutes, community security and police officers began showing up at the house. We'd exited the bus and crossed the street to get out of the way.

  “He's not wrong, you know,” Jake said, standing next to me and watching the proceedings across the street.

  “Who? What?”

  “Will. And how this kind of stuff always happens to you.”

  “You know, we still have to fly home,” I reminded him. “I'd be happy to regale you with plane crash stories until then.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  “So, she was really dead?” he asked, wisely changing the subject. “Like, gross dead?”

  “Gross dead?” I repeated.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I really didn’t. He’d seen his fair share of dead bodies, too. Actually, he’d seen just as many as I had, considering he’d been with me when we found Olaf in the crawl space and Harvey Fremont at Windy Vista.

  “I thought she was asleep,” I told him. “There was nothing gross about her. Until I realized she was dead.”

  “Young, old?”

  “About the same age as your aunt,” I said. “Similar tan and sundress.”

  “I think both are requirements once you move down here,” he said.

  I wouldn’t argue with that assessment.

  Gloria was talking with a pencil-thin guy in his twenties who did not have the requisite tan. He was nearly as tall as Jake, but it looked like the wind could knock him over. He wore khakis and a short-sleeve lime-green dress shirt. He had a notepad out and was scribbling as Gloria talked to him. When she
pointed in our direction, he glanced our way, showing off a really thick mustache that looked nearly fake before they both crossed the street to us.

  “And this is Detective Grimmis,” a very nervous Gloria said, gesturing at the bad mustache in the green shirt. “Detective, this is my nephew, Jake, and his wife, Daisy. She's the one who found Agnes.”

  Apparently, the victim had been identified.

  Detective Grimmis shook hands with Jake first, then me. He glanced around me. “Those are your kids?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All four of them?” he asked, looking at each of us. “All four of them belong to you two?”

  Why did everyone react this way to four kids? It wasn’t like we were a real-life version of Cheaper By the Dozen. “Uh, yes. All four. And maybe more, if the good lord blesses us.”

  Jake gaped at me and I rolled my eyes. If he was going to treat us like an oddity for having more than 2.1 kids, I was more than willing to play the part.

  He scribbled in his notebook, not reacting at all to my comment. “Last name?”

  “My last name is Gardner,” Jake said. “Daisy's is Savage.”

  The detective looked up. “Why's that?”

  “Because I didn't take his last name when we got married,” I explained.

  “So the kids are hyphenated? Is that it? They have both your last names? Which one comes first? Savage-Gardner?” He chuckled to himself.

  “Yeah, something like that,” I muttered, not bothering to explain that no, we hadn’t done that at all.

  His mustache twitched and he scribbled in his notebook some more. “Tell me about finding the deceased, please.”

  I recounted getting off the bus, going inside, and finding the woman on the floor.

  “Had you met the victim previously?” he asked, as he scribbled.

  Victim? It seemed an odd choice of words. “No. As I said, we just got into town.”

  “I'm aware of that, ma'am.” He looked up at me. “Doesn't mean you couldn't have met her previously.”

  I cut my eyes to Jake. He just nodded at me, his way of telling me it was fine. I knew he was right; the guy was a detective and was just doing his job. Being thorough. But still. I’d been on this side of an interrogation enough times to be irritated by his tone.

  “I have not ever seen nor met the deceased prior to when I found her,” I said.

  “So. No prior disputes or anything like that?” he asked, continuing in the same vein.

  “Uh, since I'd never met her, no.”

  “Did you immediately call the authorities?”

  I shook my head. “No. I checked to see if she was alive, then walked outside and told Gloria. She went in and then she called the police.”

  Gloria was standing next to us and she nodded, silently corroborating my story.

  “How did you check to see if she was alive?” he asked.

  “I watched her chest to see if she was breathing,” I told him. “Then I squatted down beside her to see if I could hear anything.”

  “And?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. “And I did not see or hear anything.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “No.”

  “Didn't like poke her stomach or flick her nose? Anything like that?”

  Flick her nose? “Uh, no. I did not touch her.”

  He scribbled some more before taking a long look across the street at Gloria's house. Then he turned back to his notepad and scribbled some more. “You're certain she was deceased when you encountered her?”

  “Fairly certain, yes,” I said.

  “But not 100 percent?”

  “I supposed she could've been alive,” I conceded. “But she was definitely not breathing.”

  “Did it occur to you perform CPR? Maybe mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”

  “As she was not breathing, it did not,” I said. “I did not want to contaminate the body or the scene anymore than I already had.”

  That got Detective Grimmis to look up from his notepad. “Are you a law officer?”

  I shook my head. “No. But I do part-time admin work for our police department in the town we live in. In Minnesota.” I smiled at him. “I know protocol.”

  His mustache twitched again. “I see. That's...interesting.”

  “If you say so,” I said. “And you now have my complete statement.”

  He tapped the notepad with his pen. “I do, yes.” He shifted his gaze to Gloria. “Well, I would say it doesn't look good for you, ma'am.”

  Gloria's eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”

  He stuck the small notebook in the back pocket of his pants and tucked the pen behind his left ear. “She was found in your home. She was dead. Actually, she is dead. And you told me yourself that you did not have a good relationship with the woman.”

  Gloria stuck her hands on her hips. “I also told you that no one liked Agnes. No one!”

  “But she was found in your home,” Grimmis reminded her.

  “I wasn't even home! I was at the airport picking up my family!”

  “Um, Gloria?” I tried to interrupt but she wouldn’t look at me.

  “Can you prove that?” the detective asked.

  “Uh, she picked us up,” Jake said. “And we were with her until we got to her home.”

  “I mean with receipts,” he said. “Something showing you were at the airport? You're family. You might lie for her.”

  Jake's jaw tightened and I could see he was about to blow, which wouldn't have been good for anyone.

  “Don’t say another word,” I told Gloria. I glared at the detective. “Detective, are you telling us the woman was murdered?”

  He mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Because there are no outward signs of trauma,” I said. “All you have is a body in a home. For all we know, this Agnes could have broken into Gloria’s house, had a heart attack, and died. Is that not a possibility?”

  “That’s quite a far-fetched scenario,” the detective began.

  I cut him off. “So is accusing this woman of murder.”

  “I didn’t accuse her of anything.” He frowned at me. “Yet.”

  “Are you or are you not placing her under arrest?”

  Gloria gasped and Detective Grimmis looked uncomfortable. “Well, we’re not at that point quite yet.”

  “Then she doesn’t have to answer any more questions,” I said. I looked at Gloria and tried to look reassuring. “You don’t have to say another word.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” she said, her voice pitched high. Her face was pale, her lips pinched tight. “You’ve been with me this whole time! I didn’t kill anyone!!”

  It was clear she wasn’t going to take my advice. And it was also clear that she was on the verge of becoming completely hysterical. I quickly decided to switch tactics. “Did you have to take a ticket to park?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her brows bunched into a frown. “I paid with my credit card.”

  I looked at Grimmis, who was watching us with his own frown. “So she has that record and you'll be able to check the security cameras at the airport, as they record all of the vehicles entering and leaving.”

  The mustache danced on his upper lip as he thought over my words. “I suppose so.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  “I'm sure you have the resources to do that,” I said, smiling at him. “That should end any doubt about Gloria's innocence. And this line of questioning.”

  “Time of death,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The time of death will matter,” he said, straightening his shoulders and puffing his chest out. “Once we can determine that, then we'll have a better idea if she did it.”

  “I didn't do it!” Gloria screeched.

  All four kids were now staring at us. Emily had her phone in the air, facing outward, presumably so Andy could hear the whole bloody mess unfold in real time. Or watch it – maybe she was Fa
ceTiming him.

  Grimmis gave us all a mock salute. “I'll be in touch.”

  We watched him walk back across the street toward the house.

  “He is an idiot,” Gloria growled. She was still pale, but her mouth was twisted into an angry scowl. “An utter idiot.”

  “Hard to argue that,” Jake said.

  “You do know her?” I asked. “The woman?”

  “Yes,” Gloria said, wringing her hands. “I've known her for years. Everyone knows her. And I wasn't kidding. No one likes her.”

  I figured there was much more to the story, but I didn't think it was the appropriate time to ask for the details. I felt badly for Gloria. What should've been a fun day reconnecting with her nephew had turned into a bit of a nightmare. For all of us.

  “Hey, Mom?” Will asked.

  I turned to him. All four kids were still sitting on the curb, still transfixed by what had just gone down. Emily had lowered the phone but was still tapping the screen, sending text after text.

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “Why is everyone here named after a McDonald's character?”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “First it was Mayor McCheeze,” he said, then pointed across the street. “Now that guy says his name is Grimace.” He grinned at me. “I feel like The Hamburglar might be here after all. Except he’s not stealing things. He’s murdering people.”

  SEVEN

  I had to fill out a few forms with Detective Grimmis, giving my contact information and signing off on a formal statement about finding the dead woman on Gloria's kitchen floor, and then we were told we could go.

  Except Gloria wasn't free to leave.

  “They need me to stay,” she said, running a hand through her hair every few moments, clearly still stressed out by what was happening. I didn’t blame her. “And I'm not sure I'll get to stay in my house tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Is there anything we can do?”

  She forced a smile. “You’ve already done more than enough. And I don’t want you to have to stick around. I can give you directions to the rental house if you all would like to walk?”