Dolled Up to Die (4 page)

“What about your friend Donna?” Cate suggested.

“Donna’s the biggest gossip in Lane County.”

Cate ignored that objection. “I’ll call her while you get your things together.” She punched the number into her cell phone while the deputy escorted Jo-Jo down the hallway.

When a woman’s voice answered, Cate identified herself and, without going into details, said there was an emergency and asked if Jo-Jo could spend the night there.

“Of course she can!” the woman said. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. A little . . . rattled. She can explain it to you. We’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”

“I’ll have tea ready.”

After Cate put the phone away, Mitch said, “You can take her in your car, and I’ll follow.”

“There’s no need for that. I’ll call you later.”

“I’ll follow you,” Mitch repeated.

“Bossy,” Cate muttered.

“Cautious,” Mitch corrected. “Because maybe there’s a killer out there. And who knows what he may have in mind.”

Cate mentally rolled her eyes. Mitch worrying again. Seeing danger lurking behind every bush, bedpost, and burro. Although Mitch did have an annoying habit of being right . . .

 4 

Cate had found a cat carrier on the back porch and had an uncooperative Effie stuffed into it by the time Jo-Jo returned with an overnight case.

“Thank you for checking every single item I put in there,” Jo-Jo said to the deputy, sarcasm sharp as Effie’s claws. “I wouldn’t want to make off with something that would send your department into a dither.”

“We don’t go into dithers, ma’am,” the officer said politely.

Jo-Jo glared at the deputy, but after he jotted down Donna’s address and phone number, she let Mitch take her elbow and steer her to the door. Cate carried the cat carrier with a protesting Effie inside. Once outside, where the rain had settled into a steady drizzle, Jo-Jo jerked away from Mitch.

“I am not going to Donna’s and listening to her talk, talk, talk. And I can drive myself,” she declared. She tried to grab her overnight case out of Mitch’s hand. “I’ll just get a motel room. Eddie can pay—” Jo-Jo stopped short, as if it only then hit her that Eddie would never again be coerced into paying for anything. The fight went out of her, and her shoulders sagged.

Maude was silent now. Apparently her job description covered only the announcement of incoming visitors, not
exiting ones. But there were other discordant noises. Chatter of radio in an empty police car. Patter of raindrops on car metal. Voices in the house. Effie’s jungle-cat screeches.

Cate waited several moments and then said gently, “I’ll take you to your friend’s place.”

Jo-Jo didn’t resist when Mitch led her to Cate’s car and put the overnight case in the backseat. Cate set the cat carrier beside it. The headlights of Mitch’s big SUV followed Cate’s Honda onto the gravel road. In the rearview mirror, Cate saw a uniformed figure come out and start stringing yellow tape across the driveway. Jo-Jo remained silent, except for minimal answers to Cate’s questions about locating the address, as they drove into town. The earlier daze seemed to have fully enveloped her now. Effie’s yowls dropped to occasional plaintive meows.

Donna had apparently been watching for them from the window of her white cottage. The porch light went on, and she opened the door. Cate helped guide an unsteady Jo-Jo to the door. Mitch carried the overnight case and cat carrier, then whispered that he’d wait for her and went back to the SUV.

The woman who met them at the door was about Jo-Jo’s age, but her figure was trim in black capri pants, and her blonde hair cut in a stylish angled bob. The first thing she said was, “I didn’t know the cat would be coming too.” She sounded dismayed.

“Under the circumstances, it seemed necessary.”

Then the woman gasped when she saw Jo-Jo. “For goodness’ sakes, what happened?”

Jo-Jo’s face looked years older than when Cate had arrived at the house. Her hair plastered her head like a permed helmet, her blouse hung out of her slacks, and her shoulders sagged.

Jo-Jo didn’t offer any explanation herself, so Cate said,
“Jo-Jo has had something of a shock. Her ex-husband is dead and—”

“Eddie the Ex is dead? Well, after all his shenanigans, I’d say good—”

Cate was almost certain Donna had started to say, “Good riddance!” But she managed to morph it into, “Goodness me, what happened? Did he have a heart attack?”

“Actually,” Cate said, since Jo-Jo still wasn’t speaking, “he was shot at Jo-Jo’s house.”

“Shot!”

“The sheriff’s deputies are at the house, so that’s why we had to bring Effie along.”

Jo-Jo finally said something. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She clutched her stomach, and ominous noises gurgled in her throat. Her eyes lurched into washing machine circles.

Donna grabbed her arm and helped her down a hallway to a bathroom. Retching noises followed, apparently Jo-Jo’s delayed reaction to the events of the evening. Cate stood there, uncertain what she could do to help, or if she should just quietly slip away. She finally perched on the edge of the padded bench in the entryway, cat carrier and overnight case at her feet. Effie was either scared or prudent enough to remain silent now.

A few minutes later Donna came for the case, said she was putting Jo-Jo to bed, and asked if Cate could stay a little longer. She motioned toward the living room. Cate used her cell phone to call Mitch out in the SUV to tell him not to wait for her.

“I don’t need to leave for a while yet,” he said.

A mild statement that Cate knew really meant that whether it was five minutes or five hours until she came out, he’d be waiting. Stubborn man.

Yet the reassuring thought hit her that if someone had
followed them from the house, implausible as that seemed, this person wasn’t going to get past Mitch.

Eventually Donna did return to where Cate was sitting on a white sofa in the living room, her feet on the ice-blue carpet. Neither sofa nor carpet looked as if cat paws or hair had ever crossed their immaculate surfaces.

“I don’t know if I should have done it, but I gave her half of one of my sleeping pills. So what’s going on? Jo-Jo wasn’t making any sense. By the way, I’m Donna Echelon. Jo-Jo and I are old friends.” She offered a hand, nails nicely manicured in a silvery pink that matched her lipstick.

Cate shook the hand. “Cate Kinkaid.” She didn’t elaborate on an identification.

“Would you like tea? I made a pot of chamomile when you called.”

A calming cup of chamomile held a certain appeal right now, but Cate shook her head. “Thanks, no. A friend is waiting for me outside.”

Donna dropped to the edge of a chair upholstered in blue velvet. “I can’t believe it. Eddie shot. Well, yes, maybe I can believe it,” she amended. “I’ll bet that new wife did it, didn’t she? By now, he was probably cheating on her too.”

“Actually, it looked as if he killed himself. He was shot in the forehead, and the gun was on the floor beside his body. He’d shot some of Jo-Jo’s dolls before shooting himself in her workroom.”

“Really? How . . . bizarre.”

“Out of character for Eddie?”

Donna frowned, as if answering that question took some thought. “Once I’d have said way out of character. Shooting the dolls seems to have a certain symbolism to it, and Eddie never had that much imagination. But after he dumped Jo-Jo for that blonde bimbo . . .” She shook her head, her own
blonde bob catching highlights from the lamp. “Now that I think about it, maybe I
can
see him shooting the dolls.”

“He’d changed?”

“He was certainly different from what he was back when he and Jo-Jo had their burger drive-ins. Before he went all high and mighty with the glass house and fancy restaurant and blonde-babe wife.”

“Jo-Jo thinks he went to her house to kill her, and just turned on the dolls when she wasn’t home,” Cate said. “Though I don’t know why he’d kill himself afterward.”

“That does seem strange. He waltzed around the restaurant chatting up customers and handing out favors as if he were some potentate reigning over his private kingdom.”

“You’ve been there?”

Donna touched her throat as if she’d been caught in an indiscretion. “Some friends visiting from Portland wanted to go there. I’d rather Jo-Jo didn’t know.” Her lift of eyebrows asked for Cate’s discretion.

Cate nodded. “Jo-Jo seemed to have mixed feelings about him.”

“She always talked like he was pond scum, but once she told me she thought someday he’d realize he’d made a big mistake, and they’d get back together.”

“If I can do anything to help—” Cate dropped a business card on the coffee table.

Donna picked it up. “You’re a private investigator?” She said the words as if they equaled nuclear bomb expert. “You’re investigating Eddie’s death?”

“No. Jo-Jo had called me earlier, when she found the dolls. Then, while I was at the house, the deputies from the sheriff’s department arrived and found Eddie’s body.”

Cate expected more questions about Eddie’s death, but instead Donna tilted her head and studied Cate. “Why in
the world would someone like you become a private investigator?”

Someone like you. What did that mean? Cate was uncomfortably aware that the rain had frizzed her usually flyaway red hair, that one knee now poked through a ragged hole in the worn jeans, and that sometimes she looked more teenagerish than twenty-nine. But Donna, with what sounded like a touch of envy, added, “It must be very exciting.”

“Mostly not. Our work is usually routine. Actually, I’m still an assistant PI,” Cate admitted. “It will be a few months before I get my own license.”

“Really, I’m curious. I’m a librarian. Very unexciting. How does one become a PI in a town like Eugene?”

Cate wasn’t about to go into what a scrambled-egg mess her life had been. Out of work for almost a year, job prospects as dim as a star in some faraway galaxy. Male relationships like a bad chick-lit novel. Living in a room in Uncle Joe and Rebecca’s house. And then along came God’s surprise plans for bringing good out of bad. A PI job in Uncle Joe’s Belmont Investigations. Mitch. A deaf cat. A house of her own. Well, Octavia’s and hers. It was an odd story, tangled up with her one murder case and acquisition of the cat.

“I guess you could say God opened the door, and I kind of stumbled through it. It wasn’t anything I planned.”

“I’m not very religious, but I remember that saying about God working in mysterious ways. Maybe it’s true.” Donna sounded wistful, as if her own life could use some mysterious intervention.

“But God always knows what he’s doing, even if we don’t.”

A noise from down the hall made Donna jump to her feet. “I’d better go see if she needs something.”

“I’ll let myself out. I’m glad Jo-Jo has you to look after her.” She stood up. “I’m not sure when they’ll let her back in
the house. Perhaps you could contact the sheriff’s department in the morning and find out.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks for bringing her here.”

Cate stepped out into another downpour. Mitch met her halfway to her car even though rain hammered the sidewalk so hard that raindrops bounced. This time he did wrap his arms around her and shelter her with his body. “You okay?”

Cate had come out of the house thinking all she wanted was to go home and drop into bed, but now she realized she didn’t want to be home alone with a vision of Eddie the Ex with a bullet hole in his forehead.

“I could use a coffee or something. Maybe the Espresso Junction over on Sixth Avenue?”

“Sounds good,” Mitch said.

Ten minutes later they walked into the warm fragrance of the espresso shop together. Cate stopped short just inside the door. She started a quick U-turn to go out again. Too late.

“Hey, you guys!” Robyn stood up and waved. “Come on over and join us.”

Cate glanced up at Mitch. He squeezed her hand. She knew he wasn’t overly fond of the fiancée of his business partner in Computer Solutions Dudes, but he, like Cate, was trying hard to like her. Robyn Doherty
was
likable in many ways. Outgoing and friendly, bubbly and energetic, very successful at managing a flower shop her aunt owned. She was also relentlessly money-minded and status conscious, and right now Cate thought if she heard one more word about the minuscule details of the wedding, she’d put her hands over her ears and make a noise a whole lot like Maude’s loudest bray.

“I need an opinion on an ankle bracelet,” Robyn said when they reached the booth.