Probable Paws (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 5) Read online

  “No, none of that. I just have some questions about the morning your mother died.”

  “Oh.” The air whooshed out of her, and she collapsed in a chair. “It was so awful. I loved my mother deeply.”

  Striker’s brow ticked up. “Of course. And where were you that morning?”

  Her eyes snapped over to him. “What do you mean, where was I? I was here in the house. I live here.”

  “So you were in the house when it was discovered that your mother had passed?”

  Josie looked down, picking at the hem of her off-white linen shirt. “Yes.”

  “Another family member mentioned you weren’t in your room.”

  Josie looked up, her eyes narrowing. “That’s right. I was in the library. I’d fallen asleep in there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Why are you asking all these questions anyway? Wait a minute. Are you implying there was something suspicious about my mother’s death?” Josie shook her head. “No. Mom had cancer. She died in her sleep…she looked very peaceful.”

  “How do you know that? Your family said you didn’t show up until after the ambulance came.”

  This was getting interesting. I didn’t dare move—I didn’t want to interrupt the line of questioning or for Striker to ease up so that I wouldn’t overhear.

  “Just why are you asking this?” Josie repeated.

  “We have reason to believe there may have been some foul play. I’m just checking all the angles.”

  Josie’s eyes welled. She fiddled with the bottom of her shirt some more. “And you think I know something about it?”

  “Well, ma’am, I have conflicting testimony. You say you were there, but your family members say you didn’t come until the ambulance was almost leaving. You could see how that might look a little funny, can’t you?”

  First she looked indignant, then uncertain, then her face crumbled, and she sobbed into her hands. “You don’t understand. It’s so hard…”

  “Understand what, ma’am?” Striker remained impassive.

  My head ping-ponged between Striker and Josie. Maybe she would confess and then tell us where the book was.

  She sniffed a loud, wet sniff and plucked a tissue out of the holder beside her chair. “I wasn’t really lying. I was here…well, for most of the time.”

  “Okay, tell me what happened.” Striker used his most persuasive voice.

  “I looked in on my mother, and she looked uncomfortable. I had forgotten to fill a prescription the day before … so I ran out to the pharmacy. When I came back, she was… well, the EMTs were here.” She dissolved into a round of sobbing.

  I remembered Gus’s phone call where the medical examiner had said they found opiates in Adelaide’s blood. If she was doped up that much, how could she have been uncomfortable? Wouldn’t Josie have noticed her mother was drugged up? And if Josie had forgotten to fill the prescription, where did the drugs in her system come from?

  “Why did you lie about where you were?” Striker asked.

  She waved her hands in the air and hiccuped. “The family is so nosy, always wanting to know everything. I didn’t think it was any of their business. I didn’t want them getting on me because I forgot to fill the darn prescription.”

  “So when you looked in on your mother, she was still alive?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to the floor.

  “Are you sure?”

  “What are you trying to imply?”

  “Well, it just seems odd that you would look in on her and then leave, and not an hour later she’s found dead.”

  “Are you trying to say I had something to do with it? She was an old woman. She was ill. I don’t see why you think someone killed her.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about her? Did you see anyone coming or going to her room that morning?”

  Josie chewed her bottom lip. Trying to remember, or making up a lie? “I didn’t notice anything unusual. She was so still in the bed. I didn’t see anyone near her room.”

  “Can anyone corroborate your story? Someone who might have seen you, maybe someone in one of the bedrooms near yours or your mother’s?”

  “Only Evie and Julie are in my wing. They were asleep.”

  “You didn’t see either of them?”

  “No.”

  “What time were you in her room?” Striker asked.

  “I think it was around seven-thirty. I wasn’t exactly looking at my watch.”

  “Is it part of your normal routine, then, to check on her that early?”

  “No, actually, I usually get up much later, but something out in the hallway woke me.”

  “Something?”

  “A noise. Squeaking.”

  “So someone else was out there?”

  Josie shrugged. “I guess so. I figured it might be the butler lurking around or using the dumbwaiter to bring up linens. That old thing is across from my room, and it makes a lot of noises.”

  “But you didn’t see him or anyone else?”

  She shook her head.

  “According to the police report, your mother’s room is at the north end of the hall from yours. Your two daughters are at the south end. Are there stairs at either end for access?”

  “No. Mom’s suite is at the very end. The only way to get to it is to walk past the girls’ room then mine since the only entry point is the south end of the hall, where the main stairway is located.”

  “So your daughters might have seen something. Would either of them be up at that time?”

  Josie shook her head. “No. They sleep in. If you are implying one of them had something to do with this…”

  Striker held up his hand. “Not at all. Just trying to find someone to verify your whereabouts.”

  “Verify her whereabouts? Someone needs to, because she usually can’t.” Lisa glared at me from the doorway, then her eyes settled on Striker. She straightened, and a predatory smile bloomed on her face. “Well, hello there.”

  I didn’t like the way she sashayed into the room or the way she was looking at Striker, but I knew he was almost done questioning Josie, and I had better make my excuses to get into library quickly. Besides, if Lisa was kept busy in here, then I wouldn’t worry about running into her trying to steal the family fortune in there.

  “Excuse me.” All eyes swiveled in my direction. “May I use the bathroom?”

  Striker shot me a look, but I plastered a benign smile on my face and ignored him.

  “Certainly,” Josie said. “It’s in the hall and to the left.”

  I practically jumped off the sofa and hurried into the hall. I peeked into the library, grateful that the room was empty. I slipped inside and pushed the door almost shut, enough so no one walking by could glance in and see me but so that I could also hear if someone came down the hall.

  I went right to the painting. I’d already looked at most of the books in the shelves underneath, and a glance at the rest didn’t yield anything titled Betty’s Recipes. What about the painting itself—could there be a safe or hiding spot behind it? I grabbed the edges, thinking to lift it off the wall, but the darn thing weighed a ton. I tugged, but it wouldn’t budge. Was it glued to the wall?

  I tilted my head to look at the bottom. Slipping my fingers underneath, I pushed it out from the wall just to see if there was a safe or niche in the wall behind it. There was no safe or niche. I let the painting thud back against the wall with a sigh, and that was when I saw it. The nameplate on the bottom. Daisy Edgars-Hamilton.

  Just as Adelaide had implied, she hadn’t been referring to the daisy flower, she’d been referring to her ancestor—Daisy.

  “What are you doing?”

  Striker was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “What? Oh. Nothing.” I couldn’t tell him about Daisy, because if I did I’d have to tell him about the spell book and Adelaide’s ghost. I didn’t want to hold out on information that might help his investi
gation, but nothing I’d discovered provided additional clues into Adelaide’s murder.

  “That seems like a funny place to look for your bracelet,” he said.

  “What bracelet?”

  “Just as I thought.” He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me from the room. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

  “Me? No.” He propelled me toward the front door, nodding to John as the butler opened it for us.

  We stepped onto the granite steps, and the door shut.

  “What did you find out?” Striker asked me.

  “Nothing. I’d seen Lisa in the library before and thought maybe there might be a clue in there.” Technically, that wasn’t a lie. “What did you find out? Do you know why someone would have killed Adelaide? You don’t think it was Josie, her own daughter, do you?”

  “I’m not sure if Josie is the killer.” Striker glanced back at the house. “But I am sure about one thing. Josie Hamilton was lying about something.”

  20

  Pandora greeted me at the bookstore with a stilted meow. I tried to appease her with some catnip before getting to work on cataloging more books. I entered a stack of books in my inventory system, printed off labels for them, and proceeded to put them away in their various sections. The mindless job left me room to think about Josie.

  What had she been lying about? Her story about rushing out to the pharmacy didn’t sit well. Could she have been the one that killed Adelaide? There was one way to rule her out…if I knew Adelaide’s time of death and the pharmacy had a record of the transaction, then that would prove she was not in the house when Adelaide died.

  Gus would never tell me the time of death, but I knew someone who would—her deputy Jimmy. Jimmy owed me. I got my phone from the front desk and punched in his number.

  “What do you want this time, Willa?” Jimmy answered the phone, apparently on to me.

  “Hey, I don’t always call because I want something.” Did I?

  “Well, it has been a while,” Jimmy said. “How’s Pandora? Scooter is getting along at my place just fine.”

  Scooter was a little feral tuxedo cat Jimmy had adopted. I gazed out the window as he launched into a monologue about the cat and what was going on in his life. I mechanically grunted out various appropriate noises as I waited for an opening to ask about Adelaide’s time of death.

  Across the street, I saw the flaming-red locks of Felicity Bates. She had her white long-haired cat on a leash. Odd, because I thought Felicity hated cats. I watched as the cat wound itself around her ankles, rubbing its cheek against her red stilettos. Pandora was watching too, the hairs on her back standing on end.

  Felicity was arguing with someone. No surprise there. I adjusted my angle and craned my neck to see who it was. That was a surprise—it was Marion and Evie. Marion was seated in her wheelchair, waving her fist in Felicity’s face. Evie, who stood behind the chair, was bent toward Marion, apparently soothing her. I wondered what that was about. Maybe Marion was having it out with Felicity over trying to buy the Hamilton family treasures.

  “So how’s things going with you?” Jimmy’s voice in my ear brought my thoughts back to the reason for my call.

  “Just great. Book sales are up. Pandora is in rare form. You know my grandmother was a good friend of Adelaide Hamilton’s, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy drew out the end of the word, his voice wary.

  “Well, I’m trying to do something for my grandma. Something she asked for in her will.”

  “And that has something to do with Adelaide?”

  “Yes, and it would be really helpful to know her time of death.”

  “Huh? Why the heck would you need to know that?”

  “Umm … well, I can’t really say, but if you could tell me, I’d owe you one.”

  Silence. I checked my phone to make sure we were still connected.

  Finally I heard a loud sigh, and Jimmy said, “Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you that. It’s not like we’re keeping it a secret. Adelaide died between six and seven a.m.”

  I glanced over at the pharmacy across the street, double-checking the hours on the sign on the door. Icy fingers danced up my spine.

  If what Jimmy had just said was true, then Adelaide was already dead when Josie claimed to have looked in on her.

  Now things were getting confusing. Had Josie killed Adelaide for the spell book? Or had she just failed to notice that her mother was dead when she looked in on her? She did seem kind of out of it, but I had assumed her state was due to her grief over her mother’s death. I didn’t know what Josie was like before that, though.

  Josie had mentioned that a noise in the hall had woken her. Evie’s room was down the hall. Evie had been seen out in the fields, worshipping the moon. Someone like that might be after a spell book.

  The motive for Adelaide’s murder might not have been the spell book at all. But what? Money? I doubted I could find out what was in the will, but if the motive had been greed, then Lisa was at the top of my suspect list. But why wouldn’t she just wait it out instead of risk going to jail for murder? Adelaide didn’t have many more years, and it appeared as if Lisa lived a cushy lifestyle as it is. The only reason would be if Adelaide was going to change her will and cut Lisa out somehow, or if Lisa wanted out of the marriage and that would mean she would inherit nothing.

  As I closed up the shop that night, I circled back to my earlier thought about Josie killing Adelaide for the spell book. If Josie was after the book, the only reason she’d have to kill Adelaide would be because Adelaide was protecting it—keeping her from it—somehow. If Adelaide had given up the location, Josie would have it by now, but if her clues were as cryptic as the ones she’d given me, Josie would still be looking. If in fact she’d been the killer and the book was the reason.

  I had a gut feeling that Betty’s Recipes had not yet been found, and if Josie was searching, then maybe my best bet was to follow her.

  Adelaide didn’t pop in to persuade me otherwise, so I went home for dinner then put on my all-black outfit and headed out. Pandora would not take no for an answer, and I soon found myself skulking across the field toward the Hamilton estate with her leading the way as if she knew exactly where she was going.

  We hunkered down in an area of tall grass. The grass was trampled as if someone had been there before, scoping out the house. Or maybe it was wild animals. I looked around nervously—there were a variety of animals out here. Coyote, bobcats, deer, black bears. I hoped this wasn’t one of their favorite spots.

  Pandora focused her golden-green eyes on the Hamilton house, her whiskers twitching in the humid night air. Yellow light glowed in the windows. I could see people moving around, and once in a while a word or two drifted across the field, muted by the sounds of frogs peeping. Pandora stood, her tail sticking straight in the air—the kink at the end pointing toward the mansion—seconds before an obscure door at the side of the house opened and Josie stepped out.

  She wore a long, thin sweater over a tank top and jeans. I watched as she hurried to a white rose bush that trailed up a white lattice archway. She inspected a few of the flowers then took a pair of scissors from her pocket and cut one off.

  Pandora was way ahead of me, already trotting to the edge of the field by the time Josie turned and disappeared behind the back of the house. Where was she going? I rose from my crouched position and jogged in that direction, sticking to the field, away from the manicured lawns of the house.

  Josie was on the other side of the mansion now, walking toward the woods. How odd. The behavior seemed like something I would expect from Evie. My gaze drifted past Josie to the woods, and I remembered what I’d seen there the other day. The Hamilton family cemetery. Was Josie paying respects to one of her ancestors? Not Adelaide, though. Family cemeteries on private land hadn’t been used for burial in over fifty years. But maybe her grandmother or another ancestor … like Daisy Hamilton. It was likely Daisy was buried the cemetery or her remains were in t
he mausoleum. Adelaide had mentioned the book was “with Daisy” or something like that. If it was in there, I had to get to that mausoleum and stop Josie from finding it!

  As if reading my thoughts, Pandora was already trotting across the yard toward the woods. I followed, sticking to the shadows and unlit parts of the yard.

  The mausoleum was a gray cement building with no windows and a wrought-iron door. I peered into the door, my eyes barely able to see the figure of Josie inside, standing over a cement vault. She dropped the rose on top, patted the edge, and turned toward the door. I jerked back by instinct, flattening myself against the outside. Josie didn’t see me. She exited and headed toward the house without a backward glance. Did she have the book? It didn’t look like it—her hands were empty.

  She hadn’t been in there long enough to search for anything, so what had she been doing?

  A ball of fear tightened in my stomach as I eyed the dark opening. I had to go in and check things out for myself. Hopefully I wouldn’t be swarmed by ghosts who all wanted something from me.

  The inside of the mausoleum was cloaked in the damp smell of wet earth and decaying leaves. The air was stagnant, and Pandora let out a little “Mew”, her whiskers twitching violently.

  The only light came from the moonbeams spilling in from the open iron door and a lone flickering candle that cast eerie shadows on the walls. There were three casket-sized tombs, the edges of their concrete tops decorated with scrolled designs. The far wall had several niches with names engraved on stones. Cremation ashes?

  I crossed to the tomb where Josie had been standing. On top lay two white roses. Two? Josie had only brought one. And why? The inscription on the top yielded a clue. The ancestor inside—Rose Chester Hamilton—had died on this very day one hundred years ago. Did Josie bring it as a remembrance to a long-dead ancestor she’d never known?

  Dang! This whole thing probably had nothing to do with the spell book…

  “Meow!” Pandora scratched at the vault on the other end as if she were trying to tell me something. Crazy? Not any more than everything else that was happening. I bent down to look at the area she was pawing, the name causing a jolt of adrenaline—Daisy Edgars-Hamilton.