Dolled Up to Die (6 page)

Cate followed through on her comment about praying for Jo-Jo before she went to bed. The next morning, with her
curiosity slithering out of that corner where she’d stuffed it, she spent time on the internet. The internet opened up for Mitch like a jet soaring through blue sky. Cate more often encountered murky clouds and engine trouble, although she had no trouble finding a website for Lodge Hill.

Photos showed a massive log and stone structure with rows of grapevines stretching off in the distance. Weddings could be held outdoors in the “garden chapel,” or indoors in what had once been a ballroom. The room could accommodate the largest gatherings or be closed off with screens for “more intimate ceremonies,” as the site put it. Plans were to turn the currently unused portion of the building into rooms and suites, although at present a list of “fine accommodations” elsewhere was available for out-of-town guests.

In a history section, the text said the log building had once been a private home belonging to a wealthy mining baron. His widow had started the vineyard after his death, apparently trying to upgrade his image from that of a man who cheated and stole his way to wealth into a genteel grower of fine grapes. The website treated the details in a lighthearted way that made the man who was basically an old shyster into a lovable semi-hero. It said there were even rumors his ghost still roamed the grounds.

The website included a photo of owners Ed Kieferson and wife Kim. In this photo a bearded Eddie the Ex did look quite distinguished. Cate doubted Kim had needed the help of a spell to snag him. Definitely trophy-wife material. Younger than Cate, lush blonde hair, high-wattage smile, beauty-queen figure. The spiel about the couple called them true romantics, dedicated to making weddings “memories to fulfill all your dreams,” with the syrupy hope that the ensuing marriages would be as happy as their own. No mention of Eddie dumping Jo-Jo for this current wife, of course.

A Google search turned up a few other sites with information about Ed and Mr. K’s restaurant, but Cate suspected computer-expert Mitch could have found much more. She did come up with an address for the Kiefersons’ home in the elite Riverwalk Loop area, but the home phone was apparently an unlisted number.

Cate shut the computer down at lunchtime. She remembered to stick the newspaper photo of Ed Kieferson in the file with the notes she had written. Which was when she discovered an odd fact. She had not, as she always did, written “case closed” at the end of the report.

After a moment’s thought, she didn’t add it now.

 6 

After a quick lunch with Mitch, Cate spent almost three hours at the courthouse checking on properties for a client whose soon-to-be-ex-husband was trying to hide his assets in a tangle of corporate ownerships. Afterward she drove around by Riverwalk Loop to look at the Kieferson house. She couldn’t claim she did it only because she was conveniently in the area, because she wasn’t. It was a considerable distance from the courthouse.

It was an area of big trees, and lush landscaping surrounded each house. The Kieferson house stood back from the street, behind a wrought-iron fence and a tall hedge of evergreens. Maples glowed with fall foliage of russet and gold. A modernistic steel sculpture stood in the yard, the gleaming metal swooping in graceful loops and swirls on a marble base. Cate assumed it was supposed to represent something, but she had no idea what. Probably something she was too un-artistic to identify, she decided with a certain guilt. She was the girl who in sixth grade art class did a watercolor of a sunset that someone rudely titled “Barf Soup.”

At first, looking through the trees, she thought the house simply had an overabundance of windows. But when she drove on to the spiked iron gate, where the hedge ended, the
slanting rays of the afternoon sun turned the glass to blazing sheets of gold. She slowed the Honda to a complete stop, startled. Except for a supporting metal framework, the house was all glass. Glass from ground to roof, corner to corner. Stacked cubes of it, fantastic and surreal, like something drifted to earth out of the future. A red convertible stood in the circular driveway.

A man in a passing Mercedes eyed Cate suspiciously, and she reluctantly moved on. She started to head for home, then changed her mind. Curiosity had brought her this far. Why stop now? A quick search with her cell phone brought up an address.

A sign hanging from a metal crescent moon identified the Mystic Mirage. It was located on the main floor of an old brick building. The second and third floors looked unused. The window held a creative display of candles, hanging over them copper and bronze plaques and bells with embossed figures of the sun, moon, and stars. A bell tinkled when Cate opened the door. The tiny interior had a pleasantly exotic scent of some incense she couldn’t identify, and soft flute music added an otherworldly ambiance. A beaded curtain covered an entrance to a back room. Painted astrological signs dotted the concrete floor. A collection of huge swords, and an enormous brass shield, all vaguely Oriental looking, hung on the back wall.

A woman stood behind the counter. Not Kim Kieferson, Cate saw in disappointment. Although Kim’s absence wasn’t surprising. Her husband had been dead only a few days, so it was understandable that she wasn’t working in the store so soon. Probably she was at home in the glass house with the red convertible outside. Mourning.

Unless she was the killer.

But this woman bore a definite resemblance to the Kim of the website photo. The mother, the Queen of Weird, the one who claimed she could take you on a tour through past lives? Although she didn’t look weird. Neither did her silvery laugh sound as if she were in mourning for her son-in-law. She looked slim and polished and sophisticated, blonde hair pulled back into a sleek chignon that would be too severe on many women, but on her the style emphasized aristocratic cheekbones and dark eyes smoky with expertly applied makeup. She wore slim black pants and a cream tunic, and at least a half dozen colorful bracelets circled each arm. An oversized crystal hung on a silver chain around her neck.

She gave Cate a smile and nod to acknowledge her presence, then went on showing the other customer dangly earrings by holding them against her own ears. Cate hoped the stout customer didn’t think the earrings would look the same on her as they did showcased against Kim’s mother’s slender and graceful neck.

Cate strolled the few feet of floor space. There was a display of tarot cards and Ouija boards. A headless mannequin wore a sheepskin vest over a gauzy dress, a rope belt, and cork-wedge sandals, an unlikely combination that managed to look both funky and fashionable. Shelves of books lined a rear wall. Stacked out front was a pile of hardcovers, with a handwritten sign that said Autographed Copies. The book Kim’s mother had written? Cate edged closer to get a better look at title and author, but something else grabbed the corner of her eye, and she stopped short.

It was a doll, the size of a seven- or eight-year-old girl. Big blue eyes in a pixie face, with an expression that was both sweetly girlish and a bit mischievous. A ribbon in her ponytail of golden hair matched her ruffled pink dress. A strand of
crystals hung around her neck, and she sat in a child-sized rocking chair with one hand resting on a bronze dragon.

Cate stared at the doll in astonishment. It had to be one of Jo-Jo’s creations. But here, in the new wife’s shop? No, surely not. There must be other doll makers whose work was similar to Jo-Jo’s. Maybe someone was even doing rip-offs of her work. Cate remembered Jo-Jo saying she always marked the soft bodies of her dolls with an embroidered JJ.

Cate leaned closer to the doll. She glanced back to make sure the woman behind the counter was still busy with the customer. She lifted the ruffled skirt and was just peering under it as the customer said something in parting and the bell over the door tinkled. Cate heard no other sound, but she felt an ominous presence loom behind her. Her hand froze.

“The doll is not anatomically correct, if that’s what you’re looking for,” a frigid voice said.

Cate looked up to find the woman glaring at her from only a couple of feet away. A red tide of embarrassment flooded Cate’s face. The woman thought she was checking
anatomy
. Cate yanked her hand out from under the doll’s skirt.

“But I wasn’t—” she sputtered, mortified at what the woman was thinking. “I mean—”

Okay, if she wasn’t checking anatomy, what was she doing? Did she want to tell this woman she was snooping into Eddie’s death, looking now to see if the doll had been made by the ex-wife of her daughter’s dead husband? Tell her, as far as Cate was concerned, both she and her daughter were high-priority suspects in his murder?

Because, even if Belmont Investigations didn’t do murders, snooping into Eddie’s death was really what Cate was doing here. Same as she’d been doing when she checked out the house on Riverwalk Loop. She smoothed the disarranged ruffles and gave the dress a nervous pat.

“She’s, uh, really exquisite.”

The woman pointedly straightened the do-not-touch sign that Cate hadn’t even noticed until then.

“Oh, uh, sorry. Is she for, uh, sale?” Although all Cate could really think was, what kind of person snooped under a doll’s clothing to check out anatomy? Pervert? Lech? Whatever, that was obviously what this woman thought Cate was.

“No, she is not for sale,” the woman snapped, although Cate got the impression the doll was perhaps not for sale only to her. Because she wasn’t qualified to own something so exquisite.

Cate didn’t wait to continue the embarrassing conversation. She just turned and thundered for the door. Head down, she thunked head-on into the chest of a man just entering.

He grabbed her by the arms. “What’s going on?”

In her distracted state, all that registered was that he was dark-haired, big, and muscular, with a grip that felt like iron bands on her arms.

“N-nothing.” She broke away from his hands, almost had another collision with the high handlebars of a motorcycle parked at the curb, and dashed across the street to her car without looking back. Tires screeched as a driver braked to avoid hitting her, then blasted his horn at her.

Finally, in her car, she put her head against the wheel and groaned. She’d just earned what every budding PI needed in her resume. An official pervert designation.

And she still didn’t know if the doll had Jo-Jo’s identifying initials sewn on the body.

Uncle Joe was again reading the newspaper when Cate got back to the house. Her face still felt warm, embarrassment like a hot cloud enveloping her. Why hadn’t she simply
made polite conversation and asked where the doll had come from rather than peering under the skirt? Even if she felt a definite antagonism toward husband-stealing Kim, she still didn’t like having the woman’s mother think she was some groping-hands pervert.

“Heads may roll,” Uncle Joe remarked. For a moment Cate felt as if “Pervert” must be branded on her forehead, and it was her head soon to roll. But then he handed her the newspaper he’d been reading. “Take a look.”

Ed Kieferson had made the front page again. It was not a release of official information but was instead information the reporter had acquired from “an anonymous source close to the investigation.”

The article said that Ed Kieferson’s death was now being investigated as a homicide. Shots fired within the house had come from the gun beside his body, but the fatal shot into his forehead had been fired from a different gun. The handgun beside Kieferson’s body was registered to him, and he had recently acquired a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The gun from which the fatal shot had been fired had not yet been located. Authorities were still trying to determine why he was at the ex-wife’s house and how he had gotten there. His Jaguar had been found in the parking lot at Mr. K’s restaurant. The police had not yet made an arrest, but they were investigating “persons of interest” in the case. A photo of Jo-Jo’s house accompanied the article.

Cate figured that heads would indeed roll if the department figured out who had supplied this unauthorized information.

The article in no way targeted Jo-Jo as a suspect, and yet that possibility ran through it like an ominous undercurrent.

“I know things look bad for Jo-Jo, but I just can’t believe she killed Eddie. She seemed really broken up when she saw his body. And with him dead, she won’t get any more alimony.”
That seemed a little lame as proof of innocence, but all Cate could come up with to bolster Jo-Jo’s innocence was, “She has a cat and a pet donkey.”

“Very admirable, I’m sure. Although the value of their testimony in court may be questionable,” Joe observed.

True.

“Look, just because she called you doesn’t mean she’s innocent,” Uncle Joe warned. “I’ve had clients tell me stories imaginative enough to top the bestseller lists.”