Thirty-Four and a Half Predicaments: Rose Gardner Mystery #7 (11 page)

I can’t continue down this path. Henry refuses to change his mind and Harrison has helped me realize what I need to do. As long as I can placate Dirk, I should be fine.

I hope.

Another new name, although it was just as unhelpful at the last.

She wrote about quitting her job and how thankful she had been to get a new one even though it entailed a salary cut. But by then an attorney had contacted her to let her know her grandparents had possessed oil stock, which should have been transferred to Dora. Soon Daddy moved in with her, so she decided to save the stock in case she needed it after the baby was born. She wrote about how happy she was in spite of her continued fears that she was going to get caught, although she never said what she had done.

Then, weeks after my birth, she wrote her last entry:

He came to my house, with Rose sleeping in the next room. In the middle of the day! He told me that if word gets out, he’ll make me pay. I don’t know what to do. I wish I’d never met him.

I went to Henry because if I tell Harrison he’ll take matters into his own hands. Henry’s the only one who can stop this madness, but he told me I’m overreacting. That man threatens my baby and he says I’m overreacting.

Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it.

Who had threatened her? Could the same person have also played a part in the fire and Dora’s accident?

I looked at my pages of scribbled notes and only one thing came to mind.

What on earth had Dora mixed herself up in?

A little over an hour after I called Neely Kate, I pulled up to her house, half-expecting her to tell me she was still getting ready. But she met me at the door wearing a pair of jeans, one of Ronnie’s flannel shirts, and a pair of boots. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but her hair still looked pretty from the day before.

“Are you ready?” I asked, refraining from making a comment on her appearance.

“Let me get my coat.” She disappeared behind the door and came back a few moments later wearing what looked like one of her cousin’s canvas work coats. It was so anti-Neely Kate, I had to keep from gasping.

I forced a smile. “Well, let’s get goin’.”

She paused and studied the truck for a moment before climbing in. When I got behind the wheel, she asked, “I heard you ran off the road yesterday, but your truck looks none the worse for wear. Were you still in Mason’s car?”

The realization that she’d been tuned in to the Fenton County gossip washed over me, leaving a feeling of relief. She was becoming more engaged in the world again. “It’s a long story.”

“What happened?”

I filled her in, telling her about the note and the accident.

Neely Kate paid attention to the entire story, more interested than I’d seen her in weeks. “Did the deputies find the car?”

“No. Mason called Deputy Miller last night. Apparently nothing’s turned up. I bet they’re long gone.”

“Thank goodness, I guess.”

I leaned over the back of the seat. “I got you a surprise.”

Her eyebrows lifted in expectation and she gave me a grin when I produced a donut box. “So you really are trying to get me fat.”

“Hey,” I said as I backed out of the driveway. “Sometimes a girl needs a donut.” I pointed to the cup holders. “And I got you coffee too.”

I was encouraged when, instead of arguing with me, she opened the lid to the box, grabbed a powdered sugar donut, and took a bite.

“So what’s our plan?” she asked, her mouth still full.

“We’re goin’ to the Nestons’ place first. It’s an older bungalow in the Forest Ridge neighborhood.”

“Hey,” she said, turning toward me. “Isn’t that where poor Mr. Mitchell lived? The guy Bruce Wayne was accused of killing?”

I cringed. “Yeah, but it’s not his house.” It wasn’t Bruce Wayne’s parents’ house either. They lived across the street from the man he’d been accused of murdering. Considering the way they’d written him off after his arrest, I sure as Pete wouldn’t have accepted a consultation request from them.

“Did you ask Mason about his investigation on Dora last night?”

I sucked in a breath. “No. I asked him about Hilary first and we had a huge fight.”

“Wait. Was it
that bad?
”

I shook my head. “No. He had a perfectly logical explanation. But I completely overreacted and got angry with him for not tellin’ me in the first place.”

“That’s not like you.”

“I know, but that woman drives me crazy.” Truth be told, she’d driven me crazy since before Joe and I even dated. I told Neely Kate Mason’s side of the story and she listened in silence until I was done.

“I understand why you were upset,” she said slowly, as though thinking through her words. “But I can also see why he wouldn’t want to dredge up all those bad memories. When Hilary chose to ignore him, it must have been easy for him to pretend he’d never met her.”

“Yeah.”

“But Rose.” She paused. “That doesn’t sound like Mason. He doesn’t ignore things. He takes them head on.”

“I know. We both know there are things he’s not telling me. He’s investigating J.R. and he won’t share all the details.”

“J.R.?” she asked in confusion. “
J.R. Simmons?
”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

I’d majorly screwed up. She didn’t know anything about J.R. and his blackmail against me. How was I gonna get out of this one? I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. Not now that Mason was risking his neck and his career to go head to head with the most powerful man in Arkansas. He’d told me that his trip to Little Rock had uncovered a lead on a possible bribery case up in Columbia County. With any luck, it might be the first in a series of dominoes that would topple J.R. Simmons. I knew he’d taken at least two afternoons to drive up to Magnolia to do a little more digging.

I had to keep what I knew to myself to protect Mason. But I had to tell her something. I scrambled to come up with a reasonable explanation, almost crying with relief when I landed on something she’d buy. “Yeah. Joe’s dad.”

“Why?” She was definitely suspicious.

“J.R. was behind the small business grant we got from the Arkansas SBA. Anything to do with the Simmons family makes Mason suspicious, so he’s checking it out to make sure it’s legit.” Between Mason and Neely Kate, I was weaving so many lies and half-truths, I was making one ginormous spider’s web of deceit. How in the world had I gotten here?

“Huh.”

“But like I said, we had a huge fight. He took Muffy for a walk to cool down, and when he came back he apologized for not telling me and I apologized for getting so mad at him. It didn’t seem like a good time to bring up Dora.”

“So are you gonna ask him tonight?”

I’d actually spent part of the morning thinking about it. “If Mason has a file on her, you and I both know he’s probably not gonna tell me what’s in it. Besides, he saw me take Dora’s journal out of my drawer and confessed that he was trying to gather information in his spare time, which is pretty nonexistent.”

“Did he give you any details?” When I shook my head, she pursed her lips. “That hardly seems fair. She’s your birth mother.”

“But Mason has certain responsibilities associated with his job and it’s not fair for me to ask him to break the rules to tell me.” I was already putting his job at risk, both with his off-the-clock J.R. investigation and my own moonlighting as the Lady in Black that I couldn’t ask him to break more rules. “Besides, the more I think about it, he would have put what he knew on his sheet of information.” I turned toward her for a second before looking out the windshield. “I suspect that’s the extent of what he knows.”

“So you’re really gonna just sit around and wait for him to tell you what’s goin’ on with his investigation and what he may or may not know?”

“Shoot, no.” He’d always told me that Dora’s cold case had to take a backseat to more current cases. But as far as I was concerned, that didn’t mean the investigation had to stop. It just needed new investigators.

I cast a side-long glance to my friend. Neely Kate needed something to pull her out of her doldrums and she was always cajoling me into snooping. She was usually the one who had to push me. I suddenly had the perfect solution to two problems. It wouldn’t make everything—or, heck, anything—better, but it was bound to give her something else to think about.

I turned to look at Neely Kate and lifted my eyebrows. “I want you to help me investigate.”

To my surprise, she merely gaped at me instead of responding. I pressed on. “I told you that he didn’t have much information in his file, and I can remember most of it. Plus, I have a resource full of juicy tidbits that I know he hasn’t used to help us with clues.”

“What?”

“Dora’s diary.”

There was still no response from Neely Kate and my heart sank a little. I’d really thought she’d go for my idea. She was always pressing me to use my visions to solve mysteries, and this was a mystery I’d been dying to untangle. And it had to be pretty safe. My birth mother had died twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t like it was a current investigation. Besides, part of me suspected the woman who’d raised me had killed Dora, and she wasn’t likely to hurt us from beyond that grave.

“You want the two of us to investigate your birth mother’s death?” she finally said.

“And if she was part of some extortion scheme.”

She shook her head. “You realize we’ve totally reversed roles, right? I’m always the one tryin’ to coerce you into solvin’ some mystery and you’re the one tellin’ me it’s a crazy idea.”

“So you’re telling me this is a crazy idea?”

A slow grin spread across her face. “All our ideas are crazy ideas, but when did that ever stop us? You’re sure you want to do this? I’m not sure Mason would approve since he’s obviously keeping things from you, and you know Joe won’t.”

I waved my hand. “Joe’s not an issue. And Mason… This isn’t dangerous, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“But you’re still not gonna tell him?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Probably not, given that he had bigger things to worry about. “But we’ve solved two cases. We’re good at this, right?”

“Heck yeah, we are.” I was happy to hear the excitement in her voice. “But you’ve solved more than that. You’ve got at least five cases under your belt. That’s probably more than the HPD has solved in two years. The Henryetta police should have hired you instead of that incompetent Officer Sprout.”

I snorted. There wasn’t enough money in the world to entice me to work for the Henryetta police. “Well, we can discuss this more later,” I said as I parked in front of the Nestons’ house. It took Neely Kate a minute to climb out of the truck, and I reminded myself not to push her too much. She didn’t have a huge incision, but she’d had surgery two and a half weeks ago, not to mention the trauma of almost dying and losing her babies.

We walked around the outside with the homeowner, an elderly woman who was moving to Florida and wanted to get her house ready for market. I had Neely Kate sit on the front porch while I took measurements and made notes. When I finished, I helped her up and we walked slowly to the truck. Once we were inside, I turned to her, worried. “Maybe you’re overdoin’ it.”

She sighed and leaned her head back on the seat. “I’m tired, but I’m not ready to go home yet. Besides, we need to come up with a plan for starting our investigation.”

“How about we go do the consultation at the next house, and then I’ll take you to lunch and we can figure out what to do first.”

“Deal.”

While we drove to the next house, which was in Violet’s old neighborhood, I explained what I planned to do at Mrs. Neston’s house and why. Neely Kate caught on quick, and although she didn’t have the experience I did, I hoped to send her out on home visits when I was too busy. I could come up with designs from her photos and drawings.

The next stop was quick, and even though she stayed in the truck, she looked pale.

“Would you like me to take you home?” I asked, worried.

She sat up and shook her head. “No. I know I’m terrible company but I’m not ready to go home yet.”

“Don’t worry about what kind of company you are. I just want to be with you. How about we get some lunch?”

“Sounds good.” Her voice was so soft and unlike her usual self it scared me, but I reminded myself that she just needed time and love.

We decided to eat at Blue Plate Diner outside of town. We had just ordered our food when my phone rang. I looked down at the number and grimaced.

Joe.

Great.