Fixin' To Die (A Kenni Lowry Mystery Book 1) (15 page)

“She went completely silent and pale. She knows something.” There had to be a way to get the patient list without going for the warrant. But how? “Let me see if I can get her to change her mind at Euchre.”

“Euchre?” Finn let out another sigh, longer this time, as though he was losing his mind.

“What?” I asked, snarling.

“I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. When I say get a warrant, I mean now.” He threw his hands in the air. “Not next week. Now is the time to solve the murder. The first couple of days in a murder case are the most crucial and you think you can sweet-talk her over a hand of Euchre?”

“No, but the power of the other women can be better than a warrant.”

I knew I was right. The Euchre women had a way of getting others to do what needed to be done and I was confident I would have the list later tonight.

“You seem a little off today.” His eyes lowered. “I think Jolee was right.” He laughed and shook his head. “She warned me. She said you were pretty private, but I thought you were a lot more professional than that. I guess you aren’t like your Poppa.”

“Listen here.” I grabbed his arm, bringing him closer to me. He towered over me, his face bent down, nose to nose. I curled up on my toes, my nails still dug in his arm. Being this close to him was almost too much. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to smack him or kiss him. His arresting good looks captivated me, but I had to keep a clear head.

“You don’t know a thing about my Poppa.” I pushed his arm away from me, trying to get him to back away, but he wasn’t moving. His smell made me dizzy. I clenched my teeth, my jaw tensed. The air leaving his nose breezed across my lips. “You leave him out of this.” I had to take a step back in fear of him hearing my rapidly beating heart.

“Fine,” he said in a whisper, sticking his hands in the air, taking a step back. “The way I see it…” The edges of Finn’s lips tipped up. Poppa appeared next to him. He continued, “You’ve spent all your life trying to make your Poppa proud, and from what I hear he worked well with his deputy. I get that you’ve had Lonnie for the past two years to drink coffee with and not solve crimes, but you’ve got to get on the ball and follow up on these leads. Euchre, gossiping women or not, you need a warrant.”

He brought the walkie-talkie that was still in his hand and still tethered to me up to his mouth. “Betty, it’s Finn.”

“Finn? Where’s Kenni?” Betty questioned. “Don’t tell me something happened to her.”

“Nothing like that. She’s here with me. We need you to fill out a form for a warrant for Doctor Beverly Houston’s patient files,” he said.

I grabbed my walkie-talkie.

“Betty.” I glared at him. “Please take it down to the courthouse ASAP.”

“I just got back from there filing Camille’s warrant. You got any more so we can save time?” she snarked.

The glass door of Katy Lee’s office swung open.

“Well, you might as well fill one out for Hart Insurance too.” I took my finger off the button and Velcroed it back on my shoulder.

“Kenni?” Katy Lee stuck her head out of the open door. “What are you doing?”

I gulped, swallowing my pride. As much as I wanted to punch Officer Vincent in his gorgeous face, he was right. I was going to have to go with the law and not rely on a little gossip and Euchre.

“You’ll be a hero if you solve the case,” Poppa said. “He’s right. It takes an army to fight crime, Kenni-bug. You have the brains, he’s the brawn.” Poppa put his scrawny arms in the air, making muscle poses. “You two could make quite the pair.”

I laughed out loud.

“Kenni?” Katy Lee stepped out on the sidewalk of the strip mall.

I bent over in a fit of giggles and placed a hand on one of the rockers before I sat down in it. I looked crazy and I knew it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“What was that about?” Katy Lee asked me once we got into her office.

She and I stood by her coffee maker filling up three cups with her fresh brewed coffee. The space was one large room with an emphasis on cozy. There was a large cream-colored fuzzy rug in the middle of the room, surrounded by a couch, coffee tables, and two end chairs. I was sure they used this room to sign clients up. Katy Lee had a knack for making everyone feel welcome.

Sometimes she used the space for her sample sales of Shabby Trends. It was a lot of fun to get together with girlfriends, eat, and try on fun clothes.

“Nothing.” I couldn’t stop smiling. Poppa had me tickled like he used to do when I was a child and pouting. He always knew how to bring me out of a hissy fit. “I think Finn might be making me crazy.” I poured powder creamer into my cup.

“Because you have to be around him and be professional?” She wiggled her brows up and down. She leaned over and whispered, “He’s so hot.”

I nudged her with my elbow.

“What? Did you smell him?” She moaned and let out a happy sigh. “No wonder you seem to be dragging your feet on this investigation.” She smiled.

“Who said that?” I jerked back, irritated. “I’m doing no such thing.”

“Relax. Geez.” She picked up her coffee and Finn’s. She arranged them on a white wooden tray along with a few cookies on a plate and carried it all over to the sitting area, but not before saying, “Maybe you do need a good romp in the sack with him. You’re testy.”

She flipped her head, her hair swinging behind her shoulder, and sashayed her way back to Finn. She sat the tray on the coffee table and gestured for Finn to take a seat.

“It’s nice to see a friendly face around here.” Finn gave me a quick look before he took a drink from the tray and sat down.

“I’m friendly,” I groaned. “Katy Lee and I have been friends a long time and I know she’ll help us without a warrant. Right, Katy Lee?”

“Right.” She blew on her coffee and eased down in one of the chairs. I sat in the other. “Wait. Help with what?”

“We’re investigating the break-in at White’s.” Finn didn’t tell her all the details. I was glad he stuck to just the break-in. “We’re looking into all possible suspects, and we know Ms. White keeps an insurance policy on her property with you and your business.”

“Are you telling me that you think Viola killed Doc and broke into her own business?”

I planted my palm on my head. “No, no, no. The two probably aren’t related.”

Katy Lee might be one of my best friends, but any information about the cases was off limits to anyone in Cottonwood. No one could keep his or her mouth shut. No one.

“We are investigating one crime at a time. We need to see Viola’s insurance policy. Police procedure.” I had to clear up the big spill, but knew she wasn’t buying it. There was no way I was going to tell her about the Chinese symbol and how it connected the two crimes.

Her eyes lowered, her long lashes creating a shadow on her cheeks. She smiled.

“You’re going to have to give me more than that if you want me to just hand it over.” She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair.

“We don’t have a reason she’d kill the doctor, but insurance is a good reason to break into your own business. And there wasn’t any clear point of break-in. It was like someone had a key.” Finn continued to flap jaw and spill the beans.

He had so much to learn about small towns and gossip. I looked at him under furrowed brows.

My mouth dropped.

“What?” He shrugged. “Sometimes you have to be straight up.”

“Yeah, Kenni.” Katy Lee laughed. “It is true Viola keeps her insurance with us, but she only insures the jewelry since she doesn’t own the building.” Katy Lee stood up and walked over to the big gray filing cabinet across the room, near the “office” area of the room. There were two desks, one for her and one for her dad. She ran her finger down the front of the cabinet and jerked one of the bottom drawers open, sliding it to full extension.

My eyes popped and I looked at Finn. He reacted to my shock by smiling. He was right. If Viola was in trouble, it wouldn’t be beneath her to make an insurance claim. But she wasn’t a killer. Was she?

Katy pulled out a file that was two inches thick.

“Of course, this remains confidential.”

She gave Finn a look.

“Of course.” Finn’s brows formed a V as he took the file.

“You can see here that Viola has had this policy with us,” Katy Lee put her hand on her chest, “for years.”

She walked back over and sat down next to Finn on the couch. She was practically sitting in his lap. She sucked in a deep breath, letting a grin travel across her lips. She wasn’t fooling me. She was taking a nice long whiff of Finn’s smell.

“She keeps large policies on the merchandise. Especially this one.” She plucked a piece of paper from the stack. “This diamond in her store is worth every bit of two million dollars.” She smacked the paper down on Finn’s lap. “I tried to tell her and my daddy tried to tell her not to keep such a big piece of jewelry in the shop, especially in Cottonwood.” She smacked his arm and giggled. “Because we all know no one in this Podunk town is going to buy it.” She jerked around to me with a stunned look on her face. “Oh my God. Did they steal the diamond?”

“I had Wyatt take Viola’s statement and inventory. I don’t know yet. We’re just trying to see if there’s a reason she would break into her own shop.” I took the picture Katy Lee had and snapped a quick picture of it with my phone.

“She didn’t own the shop.” Poppa appeared in the back of the insurance office and stared over at us. “Who owned it?”

I smacked my hands together. “Do you have the building owner’s insurance?” I asked.

“We do…ohmyGod!” Katy Lee’s words ran together. “And the owner had approached us about selling and said that he wasn’t going to sell it to Viola White.”

“Who is it?” Suddenly things were looking up; maybe I had my real first suspect.

“Ronald Walton.” It was like Katy Lee was talking in slow motion. “He said that he wasn’t going to renew the renter’s contract.”

Suddenly things weren’t looking good for Viola White. I had just discovered a good reason for her to kill Doc Walton.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I didn’t think Viola White killed Doc Walton,” I said, looking over at Finn, who was hunkered over a plate of the roast beef special from Ben’s. “But I’m not so sure anymore.”

“I’m not saying she did.” He swiveled his counter stool toward me. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I hope you two figure out this crime spree quickly.” Ben filled up Finn’s cup and mine with Coke. “I’m so sick of hearing about it. I’ll be glad to get back to hearing the women gossip about each other.”

Ben didn’t wait to hear a response. He hurried over to greet a couple of people coming in the door.

“I sent in the photos of the tire tracks to a state expert to get an idea on what type of tire and car the tracks might belong to.” Finn looked ahead and took a bite.

“That’s good,” I replied. “I plan on taking them over to Luke to see what his opinion is.”

“Have you gotten any more of the evidence reports back?” he asked.

“Not yet. I had Wyatt log and send in most of it.” I took a drink.

“What did you have him send off?” he asked.

“The prints we picked up from the scene, though they could turn out to be from patients or Toots. Different blood samples that might not be Doc Walton’s. DNA testing from the teeth marks,” I rambled, sopping up the juices from the leftover gravy on my plate with one of Ben’s homemade biscuits. “I even bagged and had Wyatt send the glove Doc Walton was wearing to the crime lab, hoping someone’s DNA might be there from the struggle.”

He nodded his head in approval.

“You showed our entire hand back there at the insurance office.” I couldn’t believe he told Katy Lee everything.

“I believe in being up front with people. That’s the only way I’ve found that gets people to talk.” He ate the last bite of his roast.

He took his napkin out of his lap and stuck it on top of his plate. On a fly-by, Ben grabbed it, throwing it into the bucket of dirty dishes at the end of the counter.

“Everyone is going to know about it at Euchre tonight because everyone talks.” I followed his lead and put my napkin on my empty plate.

“We shall see.” He smiled. “That’s not always a bad thing. It gets people talking and sometimes you might hear something very important to the investigation, when they have no idea how important it is so when we ask them direct questions they leave the details out.” He jabbed the counter with his finger. “I have a feeling the smallest of details is going to help us solve the crimes.”

He sounded eerily like my Poppa.

“I’ll let you know.” I took a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and stuck it on the counter before I got up. “It’s time for me to face them. Or you could go for me.” I grinned, letting my guard down a little bit. “They would love to see you rather than me. You have charmed them all with your city slicker ways.”

“Nah.” His eyes squinted when he smiled back at me. “I just follow your saying.”

“Saying?” I asked.

“I’ve heard you say you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We shall see.” He reached around and pulled his wallet out, pulling out a ten-dollar bill and sticking it next to mine on the counter.

I couldn’t help but notice a picture in the plastic part where the license was supposed to go of a very pretty brunette with sparkling teeth like his and her arm snug around Finn’s waist, both of them standing on what looked to be a beach, crystal blue water behind them.

My heart suddenly dropped, and I sucked in a quick breath.

“Are you okay, Kenni-bug?” Poppa came to my side.

“So this sweetness to all the ladies is all an act?” I asked, figuring out Finn’s game.

“You gotta do what you gotta do to solve the crime, right, Sheriff?” He stood up, winked, and walked out.

“Thanks, Ben,” I shouted, a little more loudly than I should’ve, but Finn set me on fire.

I nearly knocked over the town troubadour and his stupid guitar when I rushed out of Ben’s.

I’d been starting to fall for his bullcrap act, just like all the other women in town. With each step to the Wagoneer the madder I got at myself for letting my guard down a little bit.

“I’m so stupid!” I screamed and slammed the door at the same time, hoping the slam drowned out my anger.

“You were listening to your heart.” Poppa sat next to me. “You have a little something for that boy.”

“No. I don’t.” My knuckles turned white as my hands gripped the wheel.

“Don’t tell me that.”

Poppa held onto the door when I turned left off of Main Street, taking a quick right on the town branch.

“I don’t have a thing for Finn.” I rolled my eyes. “He is going to march right on out of here after we solve the murder, so I can’t let myself fall for that perfect smile.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Poppa’s ghost looked a little scared when I brought the car to an abrupt stop right in front of Tibbie Bell’s house, flinging us both forward. “You need to cool off. Maybe a little something with this guy is what you need.”

I jerked the keys out of the ignition.

“Are you kidding me?” I looked over at him. Through the passenger window I could see Lulu and Ruby standing on Tibbie’s covered front porch waiting for someone to open the door, their hands loaded down with food. “First off, no way, and secondly, I don’t need advice from my Poppa’s ghost on my love life.”

I didn’t bother waiting for a response from him. I jumped out of the Wagoneer and grabbed my extra clothes I kept in a duffle bag. I made it to the front steps just in time for Tibbie to open the door and let everyone in.