Love Can Be Murder (boxed set of humorous mysteries) Page 4

  Fear took root in her stomach, slowly encompassing all of her internal organs. Denial warred with reality. Had she allowed a cold-blooded killer into her home and into her bed? Was it only happenstance that had kept her from being the woman strapped into his car and sent to a watery grave?

  When the enormity of her gullibility hit home, tears threatened to engulf her. She gripped the steering wheel and gulped for air until she gave herself the hiccups. By the time she pulled into her assigned parking space in the apartment complex, the day sat on the precipice of darkness, and she was thoroughly spooked. She gathered her things and swung out of the car in one motion, slamming the door behind her. She trotted to her first-floor apartment door, warily looking for movement, shadows, anything.

  Looking over her shoulder, she stuck her key in the lock and turned the deadbolt, then practically fell into the dark interior. A ringing phone pierced the silence. She fumbled for a light and scanned the kitchen and living room for intruders. Seeing none standing out in the open, she pulled the door closed behind her and clambered for the phone. She yanked up the cordless unit, her heart hammering. "Hello?"

  "I'm sorry," Leann said.

  Jolie's shoulders yielded to the pleading tone in her friend's voice and she dropped into her favorite chair, an overstuffed wingback, with a heavy sigh. "It's okay."

  "No, it isn't. You've probably had a nightmarish day, and I go and say something stupid like that."

  "It wasn't stupid," Jolie said miserably, kicking off her shoes. "It's true—I'm gullible when it comes to men, else how could this have happened?"

  "We've all been fooled by men," Leann said, her voice wistful. "Let's just pray the police leave you out of this."

  Jolie murmured her agreement.

  "So...how was your first day as a shoe salesperson?"

  "Exhausting. I never knew how much there was to know about shoes. Oh, and get this: Sammy Sanders stopped by."

  "Ew. Was she terrible?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Well, between her and the police officer, were there any bright spots?"

  Beck Underwood's interesting face flashed into her mind. "Well, I crashed into a guy while I was carrying an armload of shoes."

  "That doesn't sound like a bright spot."

  "The bright spot is I didn't get fired."

  Leann laughed. "I admire you, Jolie—no matter what life hands you, you simply take it in stride."

  "Give me an alternative," Jolie said lightly. "How's your sister?"

  "Bloated, nauseous, and depressed."

  Jolie hummed her sympathy. "Do you know how much longer you'll be there?"

  "At least five more months, unless the baby comes early. This sounds selfish, but I keep thinking about all the clients I'm losing to other interior designers." Leann sighed. "And now this business with Gary. Listen, you probably just got home, so I'll let you go. But call me if you need to talk about it."

  "I will," Jolie promised, said goodbye, then returned the phone to its cradle. She sighed, missing her neighbor friend. They had met only months ago at the apartment laundry room, but they had become fast friends, bonded by Leann's occupation in interior design and her own job in real estate. Even though she was seeing Gary, Jolie had made time to foster the new friendship because she appreciated the other woman's plain-talking wisdom. She sent good thoughts toward the ceiling for Leann's sister's problem pregnancy. As she pushed herself up from the chair, the phone rang again—classic Leann.

  Jolie picked up the phone and smiled into the receiver. "What did you forget?"

  Silence greeted her.

  "Leann?"

  Someone was there, she could hear the openness of the connected call, a faint rustle in the background. "Leann, is that you?" When there was no answer, her heart skipped a beat. "Gary?"

  The rustling sound grew louder, then a click disconnected the call. Jolie swallowed and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, then set down the phone and looked toward the darkened bedroom. Unbidden, a horror movie came to mind, the one about the cute coed receiving threatening calls all evening, only to have the police to call her later and tell her they'd traced the calls as coming from inside the house.

  She wasn't a cute coed, and for the life of her she couldn't remember how the movie had ended. For the life of her? Bad choice of words, she conceded, moving toward the bedroom as quietly as possible. She had her cell phone in her right hand, ready to punch the speed dial button for 911. Remembering something on an airline safety report about shoes being a ready weapon, she scooped up one of her chunky-heel pumps and wielded it in the other hand, thinking that if Gary Hagan was crouching in the bedroom, he would be more likely to die from laughter than from any wound she might inflict.

  Moisture gathered around her hairline as she pounced on the light switch. When she stepped into the doorway, though, the most dangerous-looking thing in her bedroom was the multi-outlet strip in the floor overloaded with a spaghetti knot of appliance cords.

  She scoffed at her foolishness and sat on the mossy-colored duvet to remove her pantyhose, thinking she had to get a grip on herself. Gary Hagan wasn't a murderer. It was more likely that he'd been drinking and somehow had driven into the river, then panicked when he couldn't get his companion out.

  Except why would he have been near the river, so far from his apartment, so far from his neighborhood of Buckhead? And who was the dead woman?

  Her gaze landed on the book that Gary had given her to read—the sales bible, he had called it. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. She had gotten a couple of chapters into it, but had quit reading it when he disappeared, because she'd begun to feel patronized...not by the author, but by Gary. He was always pushing her to think about the future, to become her own boss. Don't spend the rest of your life working for someone else, Jolie. Why spend your energy making someone else rich?

  It was one of the reasons she had quit the Sanders Agency; when Sammy had made a snide remark about Gary absconding with her car, quitting had seemed like both a way to defend Gary and a way to follow his advice.

  Now who felt like a big, broke fool?

  She rubbed her temples and decided there was no warding off the headache that had been coming on all day. Backtracking to the kitchen, she tossed down a couple of aspirin and peered into the freezer for dinner options. One chicken breast and a package of frozen whole-wheat waffles.

  The waffles won. She dropped two in the toaster, then walked to her desk and flipped on her computer. She'd missed the early local news, but suspected she'd be able to find something online about the discovery reeled out of the Chattahoochee River. She glanced at the to-do list next to her computer and frowned.

  Have business cards printed

  Send postcards to customer list

  Pay E & O insurance premium

  Pay fees for MLS

  The errors and omissions insurance was a must to prevent an honest contractual mistake from wrecking her real-estate career, but thankfully, it was affordable. A lifetime membership to the Multiple Listing System to access home listings online would be less expensive in the long run, but five grand stood between her and that option. For now, she'd have to go the monthly subscription route. And advertising on a shoestring budget meant lots of postcards, flyers, emails, and good old-fashioned cold-calling. She was tempted not to do anything until this bizarre situation with Gary was resolved, but when the holidays were over, the brokerage company had to be up and running. Life would go on, and she needed to be able to support herself.

  Assuming she wasn't in jail, of course.

  Jolie was halfway through the waffles when she found the story she was looking for on a local news web site:

  CAR AND BODY PULLED FROM

  CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER

  A local fisherman alerted Roswell authorities that he'd found what appeared to be a late-model car just below the water's surface near the Morgan Falls Dam. A 2008 silver Mercedes sedan registered to Buckhead resident Gary Edward Hagan was pulle
d from the Chattahoochee River. Authorities found the decomposing body of an unidentified woman inside. A warrant has been issued for Hagan's arrest. The local and state police are asking that anyone who knows of his whereabouts contact them.

  She clicked on the link to photos and inhaled sharply at the color picture of Gary's car being pulled from the water by a winch, yellow water gushing from the fender wells. The next photo showed a black body bag being loaded into a van. A lump clogged her throat at the graphic nature of the photo—from the way the body handlers held the bag, the body seemed especially unwieldy. But when Jolie hit the button for the next photo, the air fled her lungs. Gary's driver's license photo. He was a handsome man, dark-headed with smooth brown skin, pale eyes, and a charming smile. But the DMV photo made him look heavy-lidded and surly. Any person who saw that photo would think him capable of murder.

  The waffles forgotten, Jolie stared at the photo for the longest time, her eyes watering and her doubts rearing.

  Was he?

  She returned to her bedroom and opened the closet door to stare down at the box of Gary's belongings the apartment manager had given to her. She debated whether she should sort through everything or not before delivering the box to Detective Salyers—after all, if she didn't look, she could always plead ignorance.

  On the other hand, Detective Salyers already believed she had looked.

  She heaved the box to the bed and gingerly lifted the lid, releasing a smoky odor into the room. Her heart squeezed with the thought that, fugitive or no, Gary's life had been reduced to this cardboard box. She sorted through bills and junk mail and set them aside, unopened. A wire tray held more mail, but the envelopes appeared to have been opened, she assumed by Gary. A check of the postmarks confirmed that they were received the week he disappeared. She uncovered his cell-phone bill, and a half dozen credit-card invoices, all with overdue amounts that were breathtaking. Gary was either slothful about bill paying or was deeply in debt.

  There was a cube of yellow note paper, on the top of which he'd scribbled, "extra door key for Gordon." She didn't remember him mentioning anyone named Gordon, but if Gary was giving him a key to his apartment, they must be close. A neighbor? A cleaning service?

  There were various flyers and postcards advertising all kinds of happenings in Buckhead, midtown, and downtown Atlanta. Concerts, art shows, restaurant openings, club events, open houses. It was how he kept up with everything, she presumed. He was on the mailing lists of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Woodruff Arts Center, the High Museum of Art, the Fernbank Museum, the Falcons, the Braves, the Hawks, and every college in the vicinity. She turned over each flyer, looking for highlighting or more hand-scribbled notes. On the back of the postcard for the High Museum, he had written—illegibly—what looked like "hardy manuals." The nonsensical words meant nothing to her.

  There were sales papers, random coupons, and other irrelevant pieces of mail. She almost missed a small envelope the size of a gift card. The envelope was blank, but contained a tiny pink card. Outside it read, "Missing you," and inside it read "Missing me?" The card was signed, not with a signature, but with a lip imprint in pink lipstick. The imprint was smeared, badly...purposefully, but by the sender or by the receiver? Was it a message from his "troubled" ex? Since the envelope had no address or stamp, the sender had obviously delivered it in person, or left it where Gary would find it.

  She returned the card to its envelope, then delved through the rest of the box's contents—a couple of baseball caps, although not the burnt-orange-colored one he wore most often. A couple of sports-themed paperweights, a Swiss Army knife, a handful of matchbooks from local restaurants, some bottles of over-the-counter painkillers, a few music CDs he'd burned and labeled himself—80s ROCK, 90s ROCK, DELTA BLUES. She winced when she thought of his extensive music and movie collection being melted down by the fire.

  At the bottom of the box was a dusty framed photograph of his parents, a Midwestern-looking couple dressed in sensible clothes, smiling as if they were having an appropriate amount of fun. She thought of her own parents and how frantic they would be if they had lived to witness this. A wry smile curved her mouth as she wondered which would consume her mother the most—her proximity to a hideous crime, or utilizing her hard-won college degree to sell shoes.

  There was a small photo album, which surprised her because Gary didn't seem like the sentimental type. The photos in the beginning were dated and yellowed—various shots of him growing up, labeled on the back in a neat, feminine script, and she guessed that Gary's mother had started the album and perhaps he had added to it after her death. The more recent pictures were mostly snapshots of him with various well-dressed people she didn't recognize. The women were numerous, but none of them seemed to have been singled out by the camera. As she turned pages, however, the faces of four men seemed to occur more often than others—and the men appeared to know each other. Could one of them be the Gordon who was to receive an extra key? She slipped out each photo, but none of the recent pictures was labeled on the back.

  There were also a couple of photos of Gary by himself outdoors. In one he was sitting on a rock, dressed in hiking gear and mugging for the camera. The next was of the same location, but a closer shot. Fingers obscured the lower edge of the picture—a woman's fingers, with nice nails. The picture was dated a year ago by the film developer, but again not labeled. Was the photographer the mysterious pink-lipped ex?

  She turned pages and scanned photos of holiday parties, then she smiled, surprised to see photos taken during their inner tube float down the river. She had felt awkward giving them to him, had been afraid he would think she was trying to force the issue of them being a couple, but had reasoned that the shots were group shots, not just of her and Gary. They were all smiling, everyone wet—even Sammy—having a good time. Jolie turned the page and stared at the last photo, then her smile evaporated.

  It was another group photo from that summer day, except Gary's tube was bumped up next to hers. She remembered the moment, had reached out to playfully push him away. But the way her hand rested on his arm looked proprietary.

  And it obviously had disturbed someone who had viewed the picture, because her face had been obliterated by a slashing red X.

  Chapter Four

  "IS DETECTIVE SALYERS AVAILABLE?" Jolie asked, setting the box on the counter lip in front of a thick window that she assumed was bulletproof.

  The cop behind the counter pulled on his chin. "She's out on a case. Can I help you?"

  "My name is Jolie Goodman. She asked me to drop this off. It's related to a case she's working on."

  "Hold on." The man rummaged for a pen and paper, then slid both underneath the half-inch gap at the bottom of the window. "Write her a note, will you?"

  Jolie took the pen and scrawled, "From Jolie Goodman re: G. Hagan," and added her cell phone number. She stuffed the note down in the top of the box, and the man came through a side door to take it from her. "I'll make sure she gets it."

  Jolie thanked him, then exited the bustling station and jogged toward her car. If traffic wasn't too bad, she might make the sales meeting on time. She slid into her seat and closed the car door, fighting the urge to skip the meeting, to skip her shift—hell, to skip the entire day.

  But that would only make things worse. In fact, she really should be around people today, around crowds, to take her mind off the events of yesterday that were threatening to consume her. She started the car and turned it in the direction of Lenox Square, stifling a yawn, a result of the sleep she didn't get last night.

  She'd placed a giant cactus beneath her bedroom window and slept with a fire extinguisher—the only thing she had that could remotely be considered a weapon. She might have to use her employee discount to buy something more threatening today, although at the moment the most dangerous thing she could think of that Neiman Marcus had to offer was the employee discount itself.

  She maneuvered back roads to get to the mall and found a good p
arking place at this early hour. Ten minutes later she slipped into the room where, to her great relief, the sales meeting had just gotten under way. From the front, Michael Lane gave her an approving nod, then pointed to his name badge and back to her. All employees, she recalled, were supposed to wear their name badges while on duty and during company functions.

  She retrieved her badge from her bag, and fastened it while the store manager, Lindy, a spirited redhead with a high-frequency voice, recited numbers from the previous weekend's sale. She recognized individual departments that were performing well, including shoes (Michael beamed), housewares, and women's fine apparel, specifically Prada.

  "Speaking of which," Lindy said, her gaze landing somewhere behind Jolie, "here's our star sales consultant for the week, Carlotta Wren. Carlotta just topped the former weekly sales record, which she also set, by the way. Congratulations, Carlotta."

  Jolie joined in the smattering of applause and turned to see what a star sales consultant looked like. Carlotta Wren stood next to Jolie's row, tall, with long, straight dark hair clasped in a low ponytail. Her slender, hour-glass figure was wrapped in a sport-stretch red dress complemented with red platform shoes and a dark denim leather-trimmed Prada tote. She had exotic features, including a wide smile with a gap between her front teeth, reminiscent of Lauren Bacall. She took a little bow, then said, "Thank you, thank you," and dropped into the seat next to Jolie, smelling of something musky and mysterious.

  "What did I miss?" she whispered.

  "Not much," Jolie whispered back, instantly edgy from the nervous energy rolling off the woman.

  "You're new. I'm Carlotta." She stuck out her manicured hand.

  "I'm Jolie," she murmured, giving the outstretched hand a shake, conscious of her own gnawed-down nails.

  "Jolie? Do you work with Michael in shoes?"

  Jolie nodded.

  "Oh, you're the one."