The Fortune Teller (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 5) (15 page)

“She was monitoring her sister’s computer since they were teenagers, and stalked her through one of those infamous back doors. That’s how she found out about the carding business, and when Victor decided to move to Tropical Breeze, she figured she’d follow him, and while she worked on seducing him off to her fantasy life in Italy, she’d cut herself into her sister’s business and live rent-free. Chrissie wasn’t too happy about having a freeloader around, but when she found out that Eden was putting Asia in jeopardy, and also selling the images from her old website, it must have been the last straw. How did she get into Eden’s computer in the first place, by the way? Did
she
break the encryption?”

“No. It doesn’t look like it.”

“No, of course not,” I said. “It’ll be interesting to find out how she knew, if she couldn’t even log in. Otherwise she would have cleaned up this stuff before she gave it to you.”

“She tried. She ran out of time. She couldn’t very well start disposing of her sister’s things – especially her computer – while her daughter was in the house. She could work at breaking the encryption, saying she was looking for clues about where Eden might be, but if she couldn’t break in, she couldn’t very well bury it and say Eden took it away with her. Asia had already seen that it was still in the house. Chrissie was working on it when she came in.”

“And I was telling her she had to report Eden missing.”

He nodded. “The body had already been found. When we asked for a look at Eden’s computer, she couldn’t very well refuse. She had to be praying we couldn’t get past the encryption either. When we asked if we could take it back here to the computer lab, she had no choice but to give it to us. So,” he said, switching gears, “you think Eden wanted Victor to run away with her?”

“She had some dream about him taking her to live in Italy with him. She was learning Italian. For the fortune teller act, she chose a name that meant ‘Happy tomorrow,’ in Italian.”

He stopped and pointed at the monitor. “She had an Italian language course in the computer.” Then what I’d said suddenly registered, and he looked at me. “Happy tomorrow. More like dead tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Detective Weyer came in and pulled up a chair.

“Kyle’s got the car. The mother – Chrissie – has been at work this morning, but he talked to the daughter, and she’s admitting now that she lied. Her mother wasn’t in St. Augustine Saturday. Asia didn’t see her mother until she came to Tropical Breeze on Sunday, after hearing that her aunt was missing. She thought her mother would be happy to see her, but instead, she was upset. Really upset. She started making all kinds of excuses about wanting to have the Jeep cleaned up before she gave it back to Asia.”

“I bet she wanted to have it cleaned,” I said. “She used it to get rid of the bodies.”

“Yeah. Kyle is having it brought to Forensics now. When Chrissie came home and saw the Jeep being hooked up, and Asia surrounded by cops, she confessed.”

“Protecting her daughter,” I said.

“What I don’t understand,” Bill said, “is how Chrissie got Kendra to go do the fortune teller thing on Saturday night.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” I said, getting up to go. “You know, nobody actually saw Kendra on Saturday night. All they saw was big blue eyes and a tattoo.”

I stayed and listened to most of Chrissie’s statement. They wouldn’t let me in the room, of course, but Bill, Howie and I were able to listen in. It unraveled a lot of little knots.

For instance, she explained how she got Asia to give her an alibi. Being her devoted child, of course she was inclined to do what Mother wanted anyway. But Chrissie had told Asia that Eden was dealing drugs, and that some scary men had come and taken Eden from the house while Chrissie hid. If they knew she had been home at the time, they’d come after her. So she needed a rock-solid alibi for most of Saturday, and Asia was willing to give her one. Even the fact that Eden had been murdered seemed to play into the drug-dealer scenario.

And we found out how Chrissie had gotten into Eden’s computer without breaking the encryption. It happened in the most low-tech way possible: Chrissie came home from her shift at Perks that Saturday morning to find Eden passed out in her bedroom with her computer up and running. Eden had come home plastered, booted up her computer, then crashed on the bed. Chrissie simply sat herself down and took herself for a ride through Eden’s computer files while Eden herself snored on the bed beside her in a drunken stupor.

What she found enraged her. Then she remembered Eden was going to be giving prophesies that night at the Halloween Haunted House. She knew her sister. She was an exhibitionist, and enjoyed the power she had over Chrissie now. She might be tempted to show off by giving hints at the crimes going on in Tropical Breeze underneath everybody’s noses, potentially exposing the whole thing. So Chrissie decided Eden needed to be silenced. With Eden blacked out and helpless, suffocating her was easy.

But then Kendra showed up, bursting into the house and coming straight into Eden’s room, wanting to continue the catfight from the night before. She found Chrissie working on Eden’s computer, right next to Eden’s dead body. Chrissie understood enough of what Kendra had already said to realize that she and Eden had had a vicious fight the night before. While Kendra stared at Eden’s corpse in shock, Chrissie grabbed a heavy metal sculpture from the dresser and smashed her over the head with it.

It complicated things, but at the same time, it made things simpler. The two victims had just had a fight in front of witnesses. When they both disappeared, it would seem to be related to the fight. Chrissie had plenty of time alone in her house to work it all out. She would frame Kendra for Eden’s murder, leaving Eden’s body to be found, while Kendra simply disappeared forever. Poof.

Unfortunately, while she was busy working out what she was going to do with the bodies and playing fortune teller, Eden’s computer went into sleep mode. Without the passcode, Chrissie couldn’t get back in and start deleting and overwriting files.

I went straight from the Sheriff’s office to Rita Garnett’s house, only to find that news of the arrest had preceded me. Gossip travels at the speed of light in a small town, and the actual arrest had taken place right there at Chrissie’s house on A1A, where everybody on the beach could look across the street and see, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. When I got to the Whitby House, I found out that the police had also picked up Rusty and Kady.

The volunteers were showing up early, hungry for news and needing other people to talk to about it. There was more wonderment than relief at this point, and everybody was still confused about what it all meant.

As I came into the kitchen, all eyes turned to me.

“Okay,” Bernie said. “Spill it. Kyle won’t answer my calls. What happened?”

“Kyle’s been busy,” I told her. “I’m sure he’ll give you an in-depth interview as soon as he’s got everybody booked.”

“Everybody?”
Mayor Rocky said.

“Well, Kady and Rusty for credit card fraud, and Chrissie for the same, plus murder. They’ve got Asia too, but I think when they’ve got it all sorted out, she’ll be cleared.”

As I talked, I was walking over to the goodie table and taking a good look around. I was suddenly starving. Once again, Justine Decker had donated cupcakes and cookies, but I figured they were the last couple of batches. After filling her Halloween orders, she had decided to close The Bakery down until she could find a buyer. Nobody tried to get her to change her mind.

I went to the big pink box, grabbed a cookie and took a bite, I was that hungry. Somebody handed me a cup of coffee and I took it gratefully. When I looked up to say thanks, I saw it was Michael.

“Life with you is just one long thrill ride,” he murmured, pulling out a chair for me. I hiked myself up at the breakfast bar and looked around.

Michael had brought Myrtle from Cadbury House, and Angie was there too. She must have left a skeleton crew at the shelter, and I felt grateful to her for taking over executive decisions while I ran around following orders from my cyber-stalker.

Ed was there, dressed as a magician. His phony moustache was magnificent, worthy of Poirot, but I thought the red satin-lined cape was a bit much – more vampire than magician. Barnabas was in the doorway, dressed as the creepy butler. Florence was stuck at Girlfriend’s, but after six o’clock she was going to lock up and sit outside the store, dressed as a fairy godmother, giving away candy and keeping an eye on that side of Locust Street. I could just picture the shop cat, Wicked, sitting in the display window and watching all the crazy humans run around in strange costumes.

Mayor Rocky was leaning against the counter by the coffeemaker, and she asked me, “If Chrissie was some kind of Internet crime queen, why was she living in a tiny bungalow at the edge of town, working minimum-wage jobs? I mean, why bother?”

“You know why,” I told her.

She stared at me, then answered her own question. “Asia.”

“Right. Asia was the one perfect thing in her life. She wanted her child to be untouched by the grubby things she’d gotten into. She needed to show she was making legitimate income, even though if we really thought about it, we’d have known she wasn’t making enough to get by on, let alone send her daughter to Flagler College. When Eden came back to town, ready to party hardy, Chrissie was desperate. She didn’t want that kind of an influence on her daughter, and on top of that, Eden came in making threats.”

“If Kendra wasn’t the killer, why did she show up for the fortune teller gig on Saturday night?”

“She didn’t,” I said. “Chrissie did.”

That caused a stir, and somebody started talking about the star tattoo. I waved the half-cookie I was holding and said, “The tattoo was a phony. It was just a simple star, remember. It was easy to fake. All Chrissie had to do was draw it on her hand with waterproof eyeliner and pat over it with a little concealer, leaving enough showing to make sure people saw it. Just to be sure, she made a pretense of looking at the customers’ palms, but it was only to show them the fake tattoo. She didn’t start predicting until she looked into the crystal ball. Other than the tattoo, she was just a woman completely wrapped up in a costume with big blue eyes. She wanted us to think Kendra had killed Eden, then did the fortune teller gig to give herself time to get away before we realized Eden was missing. Chrissie hoped Kendra’s body would never be found.”

Michael was frowning. “But as soon as the credit card theft was discovered, wouldn’t it have all led back to Chrissie?”

“No. She’d been covering her tracks for years, and the credit card dumps were coming from places where
Kendra
used to work. Chrissie never skimmed any information from her own employers. Even when she probed weak systems on the Internet, she did it through a username that went back to Eden. She’d stolen her sister’s identity a long time ago. And for the carding business, all communication with Kendra looked like it was coming from Eden, too. So Kendra’s computer wasn’t a problem for Chrissie, but Eden’s was.”

“Good lord!” Michael said. “Sisters! Each of them using the other in every possible way.”

“Right. Kendra had to have known about the username deception; it’s part of the reason she had to die. But Kendra also had personal issues with Eden. On Saturday morning, when she started to sober up, she wanted another go at Eden and barged into Chrissie’s house. She walked right into a death trap.”

“So there was Chrissie,” Angie said, “with two dead bodies to get rid of. How’d she manage that, all by herself?”

“Chrissie’s house has an attached garage,” I told them. “She had all day Saturday, and she had her daughter’s Jeep in the garage. Neither of the dead women was very big. She got the bodies into the Jeep, covered them with a tarp, waited until the wee hours of the morning, and took to the country roads. When Eden’s body was found and Kendra’s wasn’t, people would jump to conclusions. Eden and Kendra had both dated Rusty. Murders have been committed for less.”

“A lot less,” Rita said.

I nodded. “And before anybody was looking for them, Chrissie hoped to have some time to doctor her sister’s computer, deleting files and overwriting them. She was confident of her computer skills, but when she ran into the encryption, she couldn’t crack the code. She could’ve called in sick at Perks the next morning, but she needed to make it look like nothing was wrong, and that meant going in to work as usual. It had to look like Eden had just stayed out all night partying, like she did all the time. It was only a four-hour shift, so she went to work, counting on having at least another day or two before anybody started wondering where Eden and Kendra were. But I needed to talk to her about something else, and that’s when I found out Eden had never come home. I started pushing the issue, and she was forced to call the police before somebody else did.”

“That would’ve looked bad,” Michael said.

“Yes. And Asia found out her aunt was missing and came home. So Chrissie ran out of time.”

“Where is Asia?” Bernie asked.

“The police are still holding her,” I said. “Even if they let her go, I don’t think she’ll give up on her mother entirely, though.”

“Probably not,” Bernie said. “Just because you know somebody’s no good doesn’t mean you stop loving them. What about your friend Victor?” she asked, looking at me.