Heather Webber
To everyone who looks at dirt and
sees the possibilities.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
About the Author
Nina Quinn Mysteries by Heather Webber
Copyright Notice
About the Publisher
One
Thou, Nina Colette Ceceri Quinn, shall never again break and enter.
A commendable commandment if there ever was one. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't above bending the law every now and again, sneaking into somewhere I didn't belong, but I'd never actually broken anything to gain entrance.
Until now.
Shifting my weight, I swung a grub hoe over my head, hitting the window above my head full force.
I ducked as glass shattered.
My breath plumed in front of my face in an icy cloud.
A cold front swooping down from Canada had blanketed the Ohio Valley the night before. Forecasters predicted heavy snow to fall throughout the weekend, all but guaranteeing a white Thanksgiving in six days' time. A rarity around these parts.
Ordinarily, snow would throw my schedule into a tizzy. As a landscape designer I was at Mother Nature's fickle mercy.
Thankfully, come tomorrow, I had nothing planned, workwise, for an entire week. Plenty of time for the snow to melt and fifty degree temps to return to this area of Ohio.
But right now I had bigger things to worry about than snow.
Frost crunched beneath my Timberlands as I set the grub hoe aside, my feet leaving icy footprints amidst the almost naked shrubbery.
The building I was breaking and entering into sat far from the road, surrounded on three sides by dense woods. Absolutely no one was around. I didn't have to worry about being seen or heard by nosy passersby.
My fingers flexed inside a pair of leather gloves as I knocked away jagged glass along the window frame, clearing an opening for me to climb through.
Only one problem. How did I get in?
I attempted to lift myself, but I barely made it a foot off the ground. It might be time to give pull-ups another chance at the gym, despite the fact that I almost suffocated myself trying them before.
Stepping back, I gauged the distance to the window and took off running.
I jumped, I leapt, I fell on my ass. Hopefully the shrub I landed on had already reached dormancy and would recover.
Before I seriously hurt myself, I looked around for something to help me up and in. I wasn't exactly known for my grace. Or my height. I'm on the shorter side of five-footfive, and the window was a good five feet off the ground.
In the end I leaned the grub hoe against the stucco exterior of the building and used the top of the hoe's handle as a foothold.
My nerves were doing a jig in my stomach as I heaved myself up and perched on the window frame, balancing precariously. The muscles in my arms burned from the strain.
Definitely time to talk to Duke, my no-nonsense personal trainer, about strengthening my upper arms.
Wind howled as I peered inside a back room of an adorable ranch-style home that had been converted into Daisy Bedinghaus's holistic therapy business, the Heavenly Hope Holistic Healing Center.
Maybe twelve-by-twelve, the interior space looked like it had once been a bedroom, converted now into a treatment room. Angled diagonally, a padded massage table took up most of the area.
Swinging my feet through the opening, glass crunched loudly as I found my footing.
I'd have to work on my B&E skills.
No, no I wouldn't.
This was the last time I was breaking and entering. It was a commandment now and forever. And once a commandment was etched onto my mental tablet, I rarely broke it.
Nothing seemed out of place. A tray of aromatherapy bottles sat on a small granite-topped counter. According to the labels, every scent from lavender to jasmine to strawberry kiwi and eucalyptus were in the small brown glass bottles neatly aligned against the tiled back splash. Stacks of pristine white towels in every size lay folded neatly on shelves above the countertop.
The door to the room was ajar, and I crept over to it, peeking through the crack.
Every few steps I'd stop and listen, but heard nothing but my own breathing.
Quickly, I checked the reception area out front, then backtracked down the hallway, sticking my head into two other treatment rooms. Both were empty.
I nearly jumped clear out of my skin as the phone on my hip rang. My current ring tone, the theme song from the Match Game, echoed through the empty building.
My B&E skills definitely needed honing. I'd forgotten to silence my phone. How amateurish was that?
But wait, I reminded myself. There would be no more breaking and entering, so no honing of any kind was needed.
Well, except for the muscles in my arms . . .
The phone rang a second time before I could pull it off my hip. Quickly, I checked the caller ID screen and recognized my office number. "Did he show?" I asked, hearing the panic in my voice.
That morning, Taken by Surprise, Garden Designs, my landscaping company, had started a full backyard makeover in a swanky development near the office. Kit Pipe, my full-time landscape contractor, good friend, and current roommate, had never arrived at the job site.
It was the first time in four years he'd been a no-show.
"No one's seen or heard from him," Tam Oliver said. I could hear the panic in her voice too.
The jig in my stomach commenced to a full-blown hokey-pokey, shaking all about. It hurt.
"I take it he's not there?" she asked. Tam was my parttime office manager, full-time friend, and all around go-to girl. I couldn't run my business without her. Our friendship was just icing. She bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Queen Elizabeth, right down to the mannerisms and elocution. Except for her down-home Kentucky accent, she'd be a dead ringer.
A hanging water feature burbled on the wall next to me; meant to soothe, I imagined.
Soothing would be nice. But only one thing would calm me now.
Finding Kit. Making sure he was okay. Something was terribly wrong. I could tell.
I leaned against the wall. "Doesn't seem like anyone is here," I told her.
For a second the ramifications of breaking and entering flitted through my head. How was I going to double-talk my way out of this? Worry for a friend just didn't seem like a good excuse.
I could practically hear Tam's nervous twitch through the phone. "And he didn't come home last night either?"
"No." I edged away from the wall. "Last I knew, he was dropping Ana off at the airport. I haven't seen him since."
"Have you talked to Ana?"
My cousin, Ana Bertoli, had a close relationship with most of my employees. At one time or another she'd been their probation officer. The people she particularly liked, she sent to me for jobs. Through the years, close friendships had formed.
"I spoke to her last night after she landed." She'd gone to Californi
a to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her mother, my aunt Rosetta, lovingly known by me as Aunt Rosa. "Nothing seemed out of the ordinary."
"I wonder why he'd gone to see Daisy?" Tam asked.
The question had gone through my head a time or two since I found Kit's Hummer in Heavenly Hope's parking lot.
Until recently, Kit and Daisy Bedinghaus had been dating for years. They'd been broken up for about a month now, and Kit and his enormous dog, BeBe, were staying with my stepson Riley and me. It was supposed to have been a temporary thing, but Kit ended up staying while trying to get his life together.
"No sign of Daisy either?" Tam asked.
"No one is here." I'd never actually met Daisy. I'd seen the back of her head once, and heard her voice because I'd been shamelessly eavesdropping, but never had a face-toface meeting.
Kit was extremely private, and liked to keep his personal life to himself. I respected that, though my nosy side would have liked to meet the woman who broke his heart. To see if she really was as crazy as I thought. She had to be. Kit was as good a man as they came.
Tam said, "Maybe they got back together and eloped, Nina."
"Maybe," I lied. It was a nice thought, but I didn't think that was the case at all.
If nothing else, Kit was responsible. No way would he go off without telling me.
And leave his beloved Hummer behind.
Out Heavenly Hope's front windows I could see Kit's look-at-me yellow Hummer in the parking lot, covered in a fine layer of frost—it had obviously been there overnight.
I might not have broken into Heavenly Hope if not for seeing that truck there.
And spotting tiny bloodstains on the driver's seat and steering wheel.
Kit kept his car immaculately clean, so the blood had to be new. The rational part of my brain kept thinking the stains could have come from a nosebleed. Or a paper cut. And that I shouldn't overreact and call the police immediately, which had been my first instinct.
My second instinct had been to break into Heavenly Hope.
I was seriously beginning to doubt my judgment.
However, I did have some insight into police investigations. I had once been married to a policeman, and knew the police could do little at this point. Kit hadn't been missing all that long, and the bloodstains were so small they'd probably be dismissed without anything further to go on.
So I'd kinda-sorta taken it upon myself to make sure Kit wasn't inside Heavenly Hope, bleeding to death.
I must have been on speaker phone, because Ursula "Brickhouse" Krauss, my other part-time office manager, piped in. "Ach. Is Daisy's Lexus there?"
Once upon a time Brickhouse had been my high school English teacher. These days she was my full-time nemesis, all-around pain in my butt, and somewhat neighbor. In her sixties, she had short spiky white hair, ice blue eyes, and never hesitated to speak her mind. She currently had an onoff relationship with my next door neighbor, Mr. Cabrera, who loved every inch of her short, squat, brick-shaped self. Right now they were on, and I'd been seeing a lot of Brickhouse in the Mill, the nickname of the small neighborhood of Freedom, Ohio, where I lived.
There were days we actually didn't want to kill each other, but they were few and far between. One thing we did agree on was Kit.
We both adored him.
"Besides my car, Kit's Hummer is the only car in the lot."
Brickhouse clucked, a habit of hers.
And for the first time since I've known her, I felt the compulsion to cluck along with her.
Not a good sign.
"Did you try calling Daisy's house again?" I asked. No one had been there earlier when I stopped by.
"Every three minutes. He's not answering his cell either."
"It's in his truck." I'd seen it in the cup holder.
"That's not good," Tam said.
I agreed.
Tam rushed on. "I checked in with Deanna—she has everything under control at the site. Everyone's on edge, focused on getting the job done."
Deanna Parks, a novice designer, worked for me fulltime. I completely trusted her to finish the job today.
"Thanks for checking with her." As the owner of TBS, a company that provided surprise garden makeovers, my clients paid me a lot of money to make sure their yards were done to perfection. Even when beloved employees went missing.
I winced as I threw open a closet door. Thank God nothing fell out.
Like Kit's body.
Quickly, I checked a small half bath and kept moving down the hallway.
"Do you think we should call the police?" Tam asked.
I knew she must have been extremely worried about Kit if she was talking about bringing in the police. Tam had an extreme dislike of law enforcement, with the one exception of her live-in love, Ian Phillips, who happened to be a DEA agent.
"I'm not sure," I said.
I heard a cluck just before Brickhouse said, "You should call Kevin."
Kevin being Kevin Quinn, my ex-husband. He was a homicide detective with the Freedom Police Department, and had recently been freelancing for Ian Phillips.
He'd been on an undercover assignment for the DEA when he was shot. Now, a month later, he was still in the hospital, recovering after a blood infection had kept him there longer than anyone expected. He'd have a few scars and would need some physical therapy but would be just fine.
Kevin was itching to get out of the hospital, eager to go home. He wasn't one who liked to sit still for any length of time, and I secretly wondered if the hospital stay was doing more harm than good.
"I'll call." My agreement to call Kevin told me just how worried about Kit I was.
These days I tried to steer clear of Kevin as much as possible. Being near him—especially when he was hurt and my mother hen syndrome had kicked in—tended to confuse me and stir up feelings that were supposed to be long gone, taped up, and shipped off to some small iceberg in the Bering Sea.
Mostly because I'd fallen in love with another man.
I paused outside a closed door at the end of the hall. My stomach knotted. I reached for the knob, slowly turned it. "Whoa."
"Whoa what? What whoa?" Tam's voice rose.
The room was clearly Daisy's office. My superior Clueplaying abilities had nothing to do with the revelation—the plaque on the desk in the center of the room told me so.
"Daisy's office," I said. "It's been completely ransacked. There are files and papers scattered everywhere." I spotted a computer monitor, but no hard drive. "Someone took her computer too."
"Kit wouldn't do something like that," Tam said.
"Ach. He's a peace-loving kind of guy," Brickhouse said. "It's the work of some no-good burglar. Probably one of my former students. That Marvin Partridge was never any good."
I remembered Marvin. He was a doctor now, a pediatrician. I wondered what he had done to tick off Brickhouse.
A noise came from the closet, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Adrenaline surged—my fingers tingled, my heart raced.
"Is anyone there?" I said softly, barely above a whisper. Suddenly I felt the need to climb underneath the desk. I refrained, telling myself I was braver than that. Or stupid, which was more likely.
"Is someone there?" Tam screeched. "Should I call the police?"
It was hard to talk. "I don't know. I hear something. Kit?"
The closet door was cracked open. Was he in there? Hurt?
The noise stopped again.
Maybe it was just the wind.
Probably.
Definitely.
I was being delusional, which broke one of my top ten commandments.
"Nina? Are you okay?" Tam asked.
"Shh," I said, then called out, "Hello? Kit?"
Bolstering my courage, I glanced into the small walk-in closet. Maybe six-by-six, the shelves and floor were covered with vitamins, herbs, and powders that had been scattered in a hasty search.
There was no Kit.
"Nina!" Tam cried.
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"I'm okay," I said. "There's a closet here filled with pills and powders, looks like vitamins and supplements."
"Ach. Maybe someone thought Daisy had more hardcore stuff in there. That Marvin was a pothead, as I recall."
She was right—he had been.
And I couldn't help but think that if it had been Dr. Marvin, he'd picked the right place to burgle. Because I knew something Tam and Brickhouse didn't. Daisy was a big believer in the power of medicinal marijuana—and supplied it in and around Freedom to those in need, including the residents of a retirement home I'd done a mini for not long ago, which was how I learned of her little side business.