Salted Caramel Killer Page 5

  “Which dudes?”

  “Andre Weisman, deceased, and Simon Andrews,” Ringo took a long pull on his shake, smacking his lips with delight when he swallowed.

  “Anything else?”

  “She has some odd charges all in one day at a hardware store in the next county. She’s not much of a shopper, so it doesn’t make sense for her to do all that shopping in one day, in the next county.”

  “What does she do for a living?”

  “Line worker at a factory. Strange job for such a hot chick,” Ringo mused.

  “I’m assuming you have all of this information in a written report?”

  “You got it, my man,” Ringo handed over a thick manila envelope.

  “Can you print me a recent picture of her?” Kel asked, taking the envelope.

  “There are a few of ‘em in there already, dude. She’s picture worthy,” Ringo grinned, slurping down the last dregs of his shake.

  “Okay, well, thank you, sir,” Kel extended his hand and Ringo shook it.

  “No problem, man. Keep me hooked up with Fat Charlie’s and I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.”

  **

  Phillip “Kel” Kellerman dressed up in jeans and a faded t-shirt for his trip to Mariposa County. He’d be stopping in at the hardware store where Jenna had made her “strange” purchases, according to Ringo.

  “G’mornin,” the old-timer who was minding the hardware store greeted him. “Coffee’s on over by the power tools if you’re so inclined.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Kel mimicked the man’s accent almost perfectly. “How are you this mornin?” he asked, heading for the coffee pot, which looked like it contained a fierce, viscous liquid straight from the bowels of the earth, or at least the bottom of a river bed.

  “Fair to middlin. My rheumatoid’s actin up, makin me thank it’s gonna rain. How bout you?”

  “Not too dang bad, considerin,” Kel continued to play his part. “Got a question for ya,” he walked over to the man, with a styrofoam cup of the wicked brew in his hand. “My youngest girl came in here, two-three days ago, and can’t remember for the life of her what she bought. She lost the bag of whatever it was and can’t find it. Any chance you might remember what she got?”

  The old man pursed his lips. “Mebbe,” he shrugged. “I seen a lot of folks these past few days.”

  “This is her,” Kel pulled out his wallet, which contained a convincing photo of Jenna that had been cropped to look like a school picture.

  “Oh, yep. Purty little thing. Little squirrely, ain’t she?” the old man cackled.

  “She sure is,” Kel chuckled, nodding.

  “She came in and got copies of keys. Looked like the originals had been made outta tin or something, so she got good sturdy ones to replace ‘em.”

  “That makes sense,” Kel commented. “Say, you don’t happen to keep records of the patterns do ya? Those keys were to the doors of my rental properties, and I need the copies.”

  “Oh, heck yeah. I’ll just go to the key impressions for that day and reprint ‘em for ya. The computer keeps track of that sorta thing these days.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  **

  “Yep, this one is my shop key,” Missy held up one of the keys that Kel had brought home.

  “And this one is my studio key,” Echo snagged one from the pile.

  “And this is my house key,” Joyce sighed.

  “That leaves three others,” Kel observed.

  “How are we going to figure out where they’re from?” Echo frowned.

  “Well, we could try Andre’s house,” Missy suggested.

  “Way too risky,” Joyce shook her head vehemently. “The police probably have that place under twenty-four hour surveillance.

  “One of them is really small,” Echo pointed out, tapping the smallest key with her fingertip.

  “That looks like a locker key,” Kel commented.

  “The gym!” Joyce and Echo exclaimed in unison.

  “Jenna must have gotten the master key for the lockers at the gym, and that’s how she made imprints of our keys,” Echo deduced.

  “But how would she have gotten my key to the shop?” Missy was baffled.

  “I have one on my key ring, remember?” Echo reminded her.

  “But why would she have done this to all of us and then killed Andre?”

  “To set us up,” Joyce answered without hesitation.

  “Could someone really be that obsessed?”

  “One way to find out,” Kel said, thinking.

  “How?” Echo was almost afraid of his answer.

  “I’m going to go talk to her. I’ve been meaning to get in shape for a while. I’ll just happen to be working out when she comes in, and I’ll strike up a conversation with her.”

  “And just ask her if she stalked all of us and then killed her boyfriend?” Joyce was skeptical.

  “No. I’ll just ask her some normal “making conversation” questions and see how she responds.”

  “Don’t you think that she’ll know who you are, if she was stalking your wife?”

  “I don’t know, but what I do know is that we’ve got to find out what makes her tick, or more to the point, what makes her kill, before more bodies pile up,” Kel gave Joyce a pointed look. “If this Andre was interested in you, and she found out about it, you could be in grave danger, young lady.”

  Joyce nodded. “Okay. Give it a shot, I guess,” she said quietly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  Kel headed for Betty’s Diner, a Calgon favorite among the locals, after perusing Jenna’s cell phone locator data and seeing that she had frequented the diner up until about a week ago, typically around eleven o’clock every day. He waited until about ten minutes after eleven, to give her time to arrive and get seated, then walked in the door of the old-fashioned eatery. The lunch crowd hadn’t yet started to arrive, and the last stragglers from breakfast had finished their coffee and moved on, so there were only a few patrons. His heart leapt a bit when he saw that one of them was Jenna. Taking a seat at the counter, one spot away from her, he beckoned Betty, the iron-haired and iron-willed owner, over.

  “Little early for lunch, aren’t ya?” she challenged, pouring coffee without having to be asked. She knew her customer’s habits and preferences well, and Kel had been coming to the diner since he was a teenager.

  “I just couldn’t wait to see you,” he teased, thanking her for the coffee.

  “Uh-huh,” Betty rolled her eyes. “The usual or the Special?” she asked, not bothering to use an order pad.

  “What’s the Special?”

  “Mac and Cheese with four cheeses and bacon, with a side of buttered collard greens and a slab of cornbread.”

  “I think I just heard my arteries harden,” Kel chuckled. “I’ll take it.”

  “An extra hour on the treadmill wouldn’t hurt you anyway, old man,” Betty grumbled good-naturedly as she headed toward the kitchen.

  “Ouch, that hurts,” Kel put a hand over his heart dramatically.

  “It’s really good,” Jenna spoke up next to him, pointing at her plate.

  “Looks like it. I have to indulge my inner carb addict every now and again,” he chuckled, glad that she had opened up conversation so that he didn’t have to.

  “Me too,” she sighed, looking glum and picking pieces from her cornbread, dropping them onto her plate.

  “You okay?” Kel’s voice was soft. “You seem a little sad, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize it showed that much. I am sad. My boyfriend passed recently, and I just haven’t been able to pull it together, you know?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose my wife. I’d be lost,” he commented, making sure to mention a wife so that the young woman at his side wouldn’t think that he was hitting on her.

  “Exactly,” she nodded. “The worst part of it is that I lost all
of my pictures and texts from him, so I can’t even look at them for the memories.”

  Kel frowned. “How did that happen? Was there a fire or something?”

  Jenna shook her head. “No, I lost my phone a few days before he…” she stopped speaking and took a breath, composing herself. “I must have forgotten my purse somewhere, so everything was gone…my phone, my keys, all of my ID. Like that’s what I need to be dealing with right now, when I can’t even think straight.”

  “How awful for you,” Kel murmured, his mind busily calculating the logistics of the murder.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you down with my business,” Jenna stared down at her plate, then looked back up at Kel. “You just have one of those faces that make you seem really easy to talk to.”

  “I think part of being human is listening when one of our fellow humans needs a good ear, no worries,” he replied, meaning it.

  “Eat up, buttercup,” Betty ordered, sliding Kel’s overloaded plate in front of him. “It ain’t nearly as good when it’s cold.”

  “Thanks for lunch, Betty. I’d better get going,” Jenna tucked money under the edge of her plate, then turned to Kel. “Thanks for listening,” she said, and slipped out the door.

  “Poor kid,” Betty mused, surprising Kel. Betty was usually tough as nails and heartily supported the theory that one should just handle whatever life threw their way, with a stiff upper lip and a healthy dose of pragmatism.

  “You know her?”

  “Nah, but she’s a regular. Didn’t come around much last week. I wondered what happened.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened to the boyfriend?”

  “Nope, but I do know that a couple of weeks ago, a guy came in with a black-haired girl, and the gal who just left looked like she could spit nails. She stopped by their table and there were some definite daggers going back and forth between the ladies. The guy looked like he just thought it was funny. Not a very nice boyfriend if you ask me, but who knows with kids these days,” Betty confided.

  “Yeah, who knows,” Kel feigned disinterest. “Makes you wonder who the black-haired girl is.”

  “I think they work together. When I brought their lunch over, they were talking about inventory or something,” Betty shrugged. “You need a box for the rest of that, lightweight?” she nodded at the remaining half of his lunch.

  “Yep. I’ll have to hide it in my office fridge so that my wife doesn’t see my culinary transgression,” he grinned and patted his stomach.

  “You ain’t the first to go astray at my counter,” she grabbed the plate, suppressing a smile at her own joke.

  **

  “Andre worked with a black-haired woman at Chez Vogue. When I talked to Simon right after he was murdered, Simon mentioned that she was his cousin and that no one had seen her since the murder,” Echo volunteered, when Kel related his trip to the diner to her, Missy and Joyce.

  “Somehow that timing sounds like it might be more than coincidental. Who is Simon?” Kel asked.

  “One of the other trainers at the gym. Do you think we should go take Ringo some junk food and get him to try to track down the black-haired girl at Chez Vogue?”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Her name is Amanda, I remember Andre calling her that when she brought us our tea,” Missy added.

  “Kel?” Echo looked at her husband hopefully, not really wanting to enter Ringo’s lair again.

  “Yes, beloved, I will be the deliverer of Fat Charlie’s to Mr. Ringo,” he chuckled. “The dear boy asked me to order extra pickle next time.”

  Joyce rolled her eyes. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she muttered.

  “Whatever Ringo wants, Ringo gets if it helps us solve this thing,” Missy reminded her.

  “I want him to do more tracking of Jenna’s cell phone as well. I’m thinking that it may just lead us to Amanda,” Kel mused.

  “Huh? How would tracking Jenna’s phone lead us to Amanda?” Joyce raised her eyebrows.

  “Because Jenna contends that her cell phone was stolen a few days before the murder.”

  “So, whoever has the cell phone…” Missy began.

  “Is the one who has been stalking us all,” Echo finished.

  “And the one who murdered Andre,” Joyce summed up.

  “Precisely. If you ladies will excuse me, I’m off to purchase a bag full of grease, salt and other delights,” Kel stood and kissed his wife.

  “Don’t you touch those fries,” Echo called after him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  “These results are puzzling…” Kel surveyed the latest report that he’d gotten from Ringo, with Missy and Echo gazing over his shoulder.

  “How so?” Missy asked.

  “The cell phone records indicate that Amanda has been all over Calgon, but there’s no record of her being at her own apartment.”

  “Well, that’s not so strange,” Echo remarked. “If I had a stolen cell phone which might implicate me in a murder, I wouldn’t take it home either. She probably has a place that she stashes it before she goes home.”

  “I just wonder why Ringo couldn’t find any other records of her whereabouts, like credit card receipts, ATM withdrawals, things like that. Aside from the cell phone movement, it’s like she just disappeared,” Kel frowned.

  “Don’t you think that disappearing is exactly what a murderer would want to do?” Missy pointed out reasonably. “Maybe we should go take a look at her apartment. Talk to her neighbors, see if she’s been around.”

  “Let’s wait until we hear back from Ringo. He had a few other sources that he was going to be checking,” Kel suggested.

  “It’s just so frustrating to not know what’s going on, particularly with that silly detective looking suspiciously at Missy and Joyce.”

  “I know, my love, but sometimes patience pays off. When does Chas get back?” he asked Missy.

  “Not soon enough,” she sighed. “He’s on the verge of a break in the kidnapping case down in Illinois, so I can’t ask him to come home right now.”

  “This address seems familiar,” Echo murmured, running a fingertip down the list of locator pinpoints. “Kel, will you look it up on your phone?”

  “Certainly.”

  They stared at him, waiting, while his phone took its time loading the info.

  “Ah, here we are. Well, that’s why it seems familiar,” his eyebrows shot up his forehead.

  “Why?” Missy asked.

  “Because it’s the very gym that Echo goes to.”

  The friends looked at each other.

  “So…Jenna lied about losing her phone?” Echo suggested.

  “Or maybe Amanda goes to the same gym?” Missy guessed.

  “A gym membership wasn’t on the list of things that Ringo pulled up for Amanda, but I guess we won’t know the answer to all of this until we can locate her.”

  “Why don’t we follow Jenna?” Missy suggested. “Since we don’t know where Amanda is, we can follow Jenna around while Ringo tracks her cell phone and see if her activities match up with where her cell phone is.”

  “How are we going to do that without Sloppy Solinsky catching us?” Echo asked.

  “Good point,” Kel nodded. “Who do we know that wouldn’t be tailed?”

  “What about Ringo?” Missy asked.

  Echo snorted. “Does Ringo even have a car?”

  “He doesn’t exactly blend into a crowd, even if he did have a car,” Kel pointed out.

  “Okay, then what about Holly?”

  “She doesn’t seem like the amateur private investigator type,” Echo made a face.

  “She works for a P.I., and besides, she’s relatively the same age as Jenna, and is young and fit. It would make sense for her to be in some of the same places.”

  “You do have a point,” Kel nodded.

  “So, who’s going to persuade her to leave her cushy office job in order to follow a potential murderer around?” Echo blinked at Mi
ssy.

  “Missy’s request would carry the most weight since Holly works for Chas,” Kel said reasonably.

  “Okay,” Missy sighed. “I’ll ask. At least I can bring cupcakes rather than fast food as a means of encouragement.”

  “Does she even eat cupcakes?” Echo asked. “I would think that she’d have a very strict eating regimen.”

  “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  **

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Beckett. How are you today?” Holly’s greeting was courteous and professional, as always.

  “I’m fine, thank you, Holly, and please, call me Missy. I brought you some cupcakes,” she set the pink box on the counter. “I’ve been trying lots of new recipes while Chas has been gone.”

  “Oh,” the receptionist looked at the box, but didn’t touch it. “How thoughtful,” she smiled.

  There was an awkward moment of silence while Missy desperately grasped for something to say, not knowing how to lead into a conversation where she was going to ask her husband’s receptionist to follow a murderer.

  “Keeping busy?” she asked, kicking herself for how lame she sounded.

  “Absolutely,” Holly frowned. “I’ve been working really hard to organize the cold-case files that Mr. Beckett left for me. Just because he’s away doesn’t mean that I haven’t been diligently…” she began earnestly.

  Missy put up a hand to stop her. “I know, don’t worry, I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just making conversation. I know you’re very good at your job, Chas is quite pleased with your work,” she assured the serious young woman, wishing that she’d sent Kel to take care of this task.

  “Look, I’m just going to be very honest with you. I have a…project that I need help with, and I’m hoping that you might be able to lend a hand. You’d be paid, of course.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I uh…well, it’s sort of private investigation work,” Missy began.

  “Oh, I’m not certified for that,” Holly shook her head.

  “I know, and you don’t need to be. It’s not actually P.I. work, it just might…feel like it.”