Pawsitively Fatal (Silver Springs Cozy Mystery Series Book 4) Read online

  Maggie takes the pile of papers and carefully slides them into her already full handbag. If he’s giving her access to these documents, there must be something fishy in them, she decides.

  Daniel leads her away from the investigators, who are still working, and back out toward the front of the shop. Despite being open and offering steep discounts, Flower Power is not packed with customers. They’re either scared away because of the murder or because of the snow. Or both.

  “Anything else turn up yet?” Maggie asks when they’re out of earshot of the few people inside.

  Daniel pauses, finger to his lips like he’s trying to decide if he’s going to tell her. “Actually, yes. I’m sure you’ll hear about it sooner rather than later directly from the source, but I’ll tell you now anyway.”

  Maggie nervously pulls at her right ear and crosses her arms, not sure she wants to know where this is going.

  “James’s sister lives in Silver Springs. Kami. You know her?” Maggie shakes her head. The name isn’t familiar. “She is beside herself over—”

  “Of course she is,” Maggie interrupts. “Anyone who loses a family member would be beside them self with sadness.”

  “Yeah. That’s true.” Daniel pauses, struggling to find the right words. “Only, she’s not so upset about his death as about where some of his possessions are supposed to go.”

  Maggie tilts her head. “He hasn’t been dead twenty four hours and she already has a copy of the will?”

  “Apparently she’s had a copy all along but James made her promise not to open it unless he was dead. So as soon as she got the news, she opened it.”

  Maggie nods. “Not wasting any time. James must have had some valuable possessions.”

  “That’s where you come in. There were some antiques that have been passed down through his family for generations. Some go back centuries and come from different continents.”

  “And Kami doesn’t want to deal with them?” Maggie asks, assuming they were willed to her.

  Daniel shakes his head. “The opposite. James left them either to Two Sisters to be sold or to the Silver Springs Museum.”

  Maggie nods once. “The mining museum?” Once the question is out she’s not sure why it’s important.

  “The one and only. Anything that wasn’t mining related goes to Two Sisters. You’re free to sell them. Nothing’s been appraised recently, so I can’t tell you how much everything is worth. But there’s quite a bit.”

  “Why would he leave family heirlooms to Two Sisters?”

  “There is a single caveat that helps explain it a little bit, but only a little bit. A portion of each sale must be donated to a charity of his choice. He’s laid out the details in the will.”

  “Okay. But why didn’t he just leave everything to Kami? Does he have other family?” Maggie asks, still unable to understand why James would leave so much to Two Sisters. She didn’t know him other than as a shop owner on Main Street. And Clem never talked about him.

  Daniel shakes his head. “No other family that we’ve been able to locate yet. But the bigger question remains: if Kami didn’t know these family heirlooms were being left to Two Sisters and the museum, did she think she was going to inherit them? In which case, she certainly had a clear motive to profit from James’s death.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Detective.” An investigator inserts himself between Daniel and Maggie. “We need you for a minute.”

  Daniel excuses himself and Maggie turns to leave the shop. She’s surprised that after a single conversation—less than a full day after James’s murder—she already has a suspect named and the possibility of finding a second one once she looks at the paperwork Daniel gave her. This is the speediest murder case she’s ever been involved in.

  Maggie still has two hours before she has to open Two Sisters at noon, so instead of going to work, she stops in for a second cup of coffee at The Coffee Bean. Inside, she finds the first crowd she’s seen all morning. Maggie stands in line to get a coffee and listens to the conversation around her.

  “I can’t believe it,” a woman in front of Maggie whispers to the man whose arm she’s holding. “James Vaughn. Dead?”

  “I didn’t know you knew him,” the man says. Maggie decides they’re married.

  “I knew him as well as any of his other regular customers knew him. Where do you think I got you all those flowers? I can’t imagine this will be good for business.”

  The man chuckles. “It won’t affect him.”

  The woman looks offended. “How can you be so coldhearted? You must have known him at least by face.”

  The man shrugs.

  The line inches forward and Maggie listens to the conversation at the table next to her. “And after all the hardships he’s faced. Do you think this was a hate crime?” one woman with blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail whispers to her friend across the table.

  “How so?”

  The blonde woman glances around and Maggie turns back toward the line. She doesn’t want to be caught eavesdropping, even though she’s intrigued by where this conversation might be going.

  The woman leans closer to her companion and Maggie strains her ears to hear. “You know he was gay, right?”

  The second woman gasps. “I didn’t. But . . . not that it matters. He sold beautiful flowers.”

  “But not everyone was so accepting of his . . . choices,” the blonde adds.

  “I thought he was divorced.”

  The blonde woman nods. “Mm hmm,” she confirms, and Maggie moves forward again.

  “Can I help you?” Tess Shea asks Maggie who has finally made it to the counter.

  “Large, dark roast.” She glances around and sees a single chair being vacated near some windows. “For here.”

  Tess rings her up, not acknowledging that she served her dinner last night at Clem and Denis’s wedding, and hands Maggie a large yellow mug with a smiling sunflower on it. Maggie heads to the self serve coffee pots and fills her mug to the brim, then sits in the overstuffed chair before anyone else can claim it.

  She knows she’s lucky to have a seat on such a busy Sunday morning. She wonders if it’s only so busy because of the drama next door. The snow is still coming down, keeping plenty of people either at home or on their skis.

  Maggie pulls out the stack of papers Daniel gave her and glances through them. There are several different sections stapled together, including financial records of the flower shop, employee information, and inventory. Maggie starts with the employee information.

  The records go back all the way to the opening of Flower Power, twelve years ago. Maggie didn’t know James well, but wouldn’t have suspected he could have been a store owner for over a decade. He looked too young.

  When he opened, Maggie learns, James was the only person working there. That lasted only a few months when he hired his first employee.

  Maggie skims through past employee résumés and annual evaluations, but she’s mostly interested in the recent hires. Mona Fitch and Krystal Jeffries are the only two people working for James for the last year. Mona is in charge of the books and inventory and Krystal does customer service and sales while also acting as backup for arrangements during busy times. That left James for all of the arrangements the rest of the year.

  Nothing stands out about Mona or Krystal. Both are in their early thirties, have always lived in Silver Springs and received glowing evaluations from James.

  Maggie sets the employee information aside and moves onto the financial records. She can always come back to the employee papers and look through past staff if she can’t find any suspects.

  Maggie is less familiar with bookkeeping protocols, always having outsourced that task when she was a private detective and Clem takes care of it at Two Sisters. So she goes slowly through the last couple months of data, carefully checking each item. She also isn’t familiar with what might be normal purchases for a flower shop, but some line items stand out that make her question their le
gitimacy.

  Maggie fumbles in her overcrowded handbag for a highlighter and marks the entries that catch her eye. There are plenty of questionable write offs, and they certainly add up.

  She continues down the list, and more and more expenses raise red flags. Meals, entertainment and travel expenses add up quickly and she does some math on the side of the paper. In January alone, over $13,000 was written off in those three categories.

  Maybe James was going to flower shows or exhibits, she justifies, and browses the last quarter of last year. She’s not quite as surprised when she discovers each month from October through December also has what she considers exorbitant expenses for meals and travel.

  Maggie checks the time and packs up. She has to get to Two Sisters and take care of a couple things before she opens. She pours her coffee into a travel cup, leaves the yellow mug at the counter and walks the block to work in the heavy snow.

  As soon as she unlocks the back door and lets herself inside, the red English phone booth near the front door starts ringing and Maggie runs to answer it.

  “I thought you’d never show up,” a man’s voice says.

  “James?” Maggie asks, already sure that’s who she’s talking to.

  “The one and only. Just calling to see what you’ve dug up so far,” he says, as if they’re best friends and picking up an old conversation.

  “More than I expected given that your body is barely cold.” She cringes at her words. She’s still not used to talking to ghosts on the phone.

  “Great. Lay it on me.”

  “The police are curious about your sister. Since you left some big antique items to Two Sisters—thanks, by the way—and the mining museum, she’s pretty upset about that,” Maggie explains.

  “It’s just like Kami to overlook my untimely death and focus on the money instead.” Maggie can almost picture James waving his hand through the air as he speaks. “I knew she wouldn’t easily accept that decision of mine. But she has just as many family heirlooms. And who is she going to leave them to? She’ll do the same thing once it’s her time.”

  “Did she know you weren’t leaving anything to her?”

  “No. I made her promise not to look at the copy of my will I gave her until I died. I guess she stuck to that promise.” He sounds slightly surprised.

  “But why didn’t you leave anything to Kami?” Maggie asks. “Let her deal with everything.”

  “That’s what she wanted. But she doesn’t need the money. I’d rather have a couple charities benefit from my death instead.” James’s voice isn’t cold but he certainly doesn’t sound like he was close to his sister.

  “What about Flower Power? Who got that?” Maggie asks, changing the subject and thinking about his two employees.

  “Kami will get that. She can sell it if she wants. She’s not business minded at all.”

  So James didn’t leave his sister high and dry, she just didn’t get what she was after it sounds like.

  “Anyone I should be suspicious of? Someone who might have wanted you dead?”

  James chuckles. His spirits are high, despite having been murdered. “You mean besides Kami? Yeah. One person you’ll want to keep a close eye on—Anya LeClair. My ex-wife.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Maggie knows the conversation is finished before she has a chance to say goodbye. She waits a moment to make sure that James is no longer on the other end of the line and then hangs up. She goes to Clem’s office and makes herself at home. This is her office for the next week.

  Rather than starting work for Two Sisters, Maggie pulls out her tablet computer from her handbag and starts a new document. She has plenty of notes to enter to stay organized if she hopes to figure out what happened to James.

  When she’s satisfied that she hasn’t left out any details about Kami, James’s family heirlooms, the employee and financial records from Flower Power, and Anya LeClair who remains almost an unknown, Maggie pulls out her cell phone to make a call.

  “Hey Maggie,” Trista answers. “I saw you called earlier. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you.”

  “No problem. I didn’t pay attention to the time when I called before.”

  Trista gets down to business. “You have another case in Silver Springs?”

  “I do. James Vaughn was killed last night.” There is scribbling on the other end of the phone.

  “Any other details?”

  “He owned Flower Power here in Silver Springs. But what I want you to focus on is a connection to the last murders. Anyone who might know Josh McMann, Mitch Cable and Karl Jacobs.” Maggie is sure something will come of this.

  “Got it. It sounds like a group serial killer. Should you be worried?” Trista asks with concern in her voice.

  Maggie appreciates her concern but she hasn’t shared with Trista what links Josh, Mitch and Karl together. She realizes that she probably should be worried.

  “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.” Maggie smiles to convince herself that’s true.

  “Great. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie hangs up, adds a note to her tablet that she’s talked to Trista and then heads out to the shop to get to work.

  Maggie has never run Two Sisters alone for a whole day. She has been closing alone since she moved to Silver Springs in September, but this is a whole new level of responsibility. As long as no one asks her anything too obscure about a particular antique, she should be fine. But that’s a big gamble.

  At noon, Maggie unlocks the front door, turns the sign to Open and waits for her first customer while reading more of the papers Daniel gave her. After half an hour, she’s gotten no further with figuring out who was spending all the money on travel and seemingly non-business related entertainment when her first customer enters.

  “Slow day?” Drew asks as he walks across the store to where Maggie is seated next to the counter. Clem has two chairs there that have come in handy on slow days, or when she had a particularly lucrative sale to discuss.

  “Thankfully. I don’t know what I’d do if I was swamped. Sales is a little different than cracking a murder case. And I’m more comfortable with the murder case.” Maggie smiles when Drew takes his hand out from behind his back. He hands her a bunch of white calla lilies.

  “Main Street is packed, and not just with Sunday traffic. Everyone is at either The Coffee Bean or Flower Power. I’m surprised Flower Power is even open. But since they were,” he hands her the flowers, “I got you a little something. Congratulations on your first day of responsibility at Two Sisters.”

  Maggie happily takes the lilies and blushes. This isn’t the first time he’s brought her flowers. She has to rummage around behind the counter to find something passable for a vase and pours water from her water bottle into the jar. It’ll work until she gets them home.

  Drew sits in the second chair and Maggie tells him about her morning at the flower shop, including the leads she’s following, and Daniel’s hesitancy to allow the shop to open. “But the police just needed the cooler so he let Mona and Krystal empty it and sell what they had on hand.”

  Drew nods. “Nice of him.”

  “And I had a call from James.” Drew is one of the few people who knows about ghosts calling at Two Sisters on the red phone booth. He raises his eyebrows in question but doesn’t say anything. “He didn’t say his sister is innocent. And he gave me the name of his ex-wife, who he also thought might have a hand in his death.”

  “What about Winona? Did she see anything?” Drew asks.

  “I didn’t get a chance to talk to her this morning. And now I’m stuck here. This is going to be a much harder case to work on if Clem isn’t around to cover my day job.” Maggie laughs.

  “Winona could always come here. I hear she has a phone.”

  Maggie smirks at his sarcasm. “As a last resort. But I don’t want customers overhearing our conversation. That certainly wouldn’t be good for business.”

  “And you have so many c
ustomers at the moment.” Maggie shoots him a look that tells him to knock it off. He raises his hands in defense. “Just trying to help. I see that my suggestions aren’t being well received.”

  Maggie relents. “Sorry. You’re right. Today is a good day to have her come in so I can ask her more about what she saw or heard. Thank you for your insight.”

  Drew smiles. “I’ll get out of your way then.”

  He stands and walks toward the front door but Maggie calls to his retreating back, “I could use the company later if business doesn’t pick up.”

  He waves, acknowledging that he heard her, but without an answer, she’s unsure whether he’ll return to Two Sisters or show up at her house after work. She’d be fine with either.

  With business so slow, Maggie takes a chance and calls Winona just after one o’clock. She’s had only one customer and the street is nearly empty of pedestrians. The snow is still coming down but it’s slowing.

  “Hi Maggie,” Winona answers after several rings. Maggie thought she wouldn’t pick up.

  “Hi Winona. How are you doing today?” Maggie asks, getting to the reason for her call slowly and gently.

  “Much better. I mean, certainly not calm after yesterday’s catastrophe, but I’ll be okay. It’s not like Ginger Rae’s or Erline’s experiences where someone was killed in their homes,” Winona says flatly.

  Maggie nods. There must be a difference between seeing a dead body in your house versus at a shop. “Have you ventured out into the snow at all?”

  “I’m actually at the dog park. I just got the dogs back into the car. Barney and Pluto didn’t want to spend much time out there, if you can imagine.” Winona’s bulldog, Barney, and recently adopted corgi, Pluto, are her pride and joy.

  “Mm. I can imagine. How do they even make it through the snow with those short legs?”

  Winona laughs. “It’s a sight to behold.”

  Maggie chuckles along. “Well since you’re already in town, I wondered if you’d stop by Two Sisters and go over everything you heard and saw yesterday. I know that’s probably not how you wanted to spend your afternoon, but—”