Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  Unable to sit still, I rose and strode for the front window, hoping that the sight of my garden would calm me. I was overreacting, feeling testy because my privacy, which I valued, had been invaded for no good reason. But poor Julia. If word of these notes got out—and it would—the Post would make her life miserable.

  As I surveyed my garden, I saw a Juniper Grove Police Department SUV pull to the curb in front of Julia’s house. “Julia, the police are at your house,” I said, looking back to her.

  “Not a surprise.” Her eyes were grim but determined.

  “I don’t know if I can help you figure out who wrote those notes, but I can try,” I said. “How about you, Holly? Let’s put our heads together. Meet me here this evening?”

  CHAPTER 2

  After Julia left my house, finally conceding there was little chance she could avoid the police forever by sitting in my kitchen, my mind raced. So I’d bought a house connected, however obliquely, to a bank robbery. And now, courtesy of the court ruling on George Foster’s death, that robbery was in the news again.

  I walked to the back of my house, sipping my second cup of coffee. Why would George have buried money here, behind my faux-Victorian house? Had the house been vacant at the time? These were questions I needed to ask Julia tonight. Surely the police had searched the grounds—and inside the house. I slid back the deadbolt on the back door and opened it.

  Leaning on the doorjamb, I looked at the foothills—so near I could almost touch them—once again thanking God for bringing me home. I was a Colorado girl by birth, but I’d lived more than seven years in Boston, working as senior editor at a publishing house. By the end of those years I’d turned short-tempered and stern. The endless meetings, the sniping about corner offices and how many coffees we could rightfully drink, the prim city wardrobes—I’d had my fill.

  Not to say that I moved to this little town nestled against the foothills because here I could wear jeans every day, though the idea appealed to me every Boston morning as I slipped into dresses and heels. I’m a hiking boots kind of girl.

  For more than seven years I scrimped and saved, calculating that I could live in a small town like Juniper Grove on very little money. Which is good, because very little was what I had. I began to write mysteries before I left Boston, and I found a company willing to publish them. My mysteries weren’t big sellers, but maybe one day. In the meantime, with no children or husband to spend money on, my savings and a small inheritance from my parents were more than enough.

  I heard my doorbell and imagined Julia back again, needing to commiserate, but when I opened the door, I was greeted instead by two police officers. Smiling ones, thankfully.

  “Ma’am, I’m Police Chief James Gilroy and this is Officer Hammond. Have you got a moment?”

  “This is about the notes people found on their doors this morning?”

  Chief Gilroy raised an eyebrow. “Did you get one too?”

  “No, I didn’t. Come in.” I stepped back from the doorway and motioned them inside. “Can I get you coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Gilroy answered quickly, before Officer Hammond, who looked as though he wanted nothing more than caffeine at that moment, could answer.

  I pointed at my kitchen table. “Have a seat.”

  “We’ll only be here a minute,” Gilroy said, remaining standing.

  Officer Hammond wanted to sit, I could tell. He wanted to sit and have a cup of coffee and a donut. He didn’t look particularly energetic, despite the fact that he appeared to be five to ten years younger than Gilroy. But Hammond had one of those approachable faces. Friendly and open.

  Gilroy, on the other hand, was all business. Dark hair and ice blue eyes. Not friendly. I’d sized him up in all of sixty seconds, which perhaps wasn’t fair. On the plus side, he wasn’t wearing a police uniform or even a tie with his suit jacket.

  “You talked to Julia, my neighbor?” I asked.

  “We did. We’re canvassing the neighborhood, asking if anyone saw or heard anything unusual last night.”

  “I didn’t. I understand the police department got one of those notes too.”

  “Yep,” Hammond said.

  “Do you live here alone?” Gilroy asked.

  “Yes. Why? Do you think this note writer is dangerous?”

  “I doubt it, but keep your doors locked. It’s good policy at any time.”

  “Someone familiar with the goings-on seven years ago must have written those notes.”

  Gilroy said nothing. He dug around his inside jacket pocket and then presented me with his business card. “Call me if you see or hear anything.”

  I took his card. “Are you really going to try to find out who wrote the notes?”

  Gilroy looked at me as though I’d asked the strangest question he’d heard in years. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “It’s just that in Boston, since the notes don’t threaten anyone, they wouldn’t even—”

  “This isn’t Boston.”

  “Well, I’m not from Boston.” I was about to recite my Colorado bona fides but decided against it. It was none of his business, and anyway, he was moving for the door and I had questions to ask. “I understand that some people think George Foster buried cash on my property.”

  Officer Hammond, who had been following Gilroy to the door, turned back, a grin on his face. “For a year after the theft we had treasure hunters digging holes in your backyard. That’s why the previous owners put up a fence.”

  “Is that why I’m supposed to be careful?” Hammond was the one talking, but I addressed my question to Gilroy.

  “There’s nothing buried in your yard,” Gilroy said. “Foster and Dillard took off right after leaving the bank. They didn’t stop to dig holes.”

  “Are you looking for a stranger or a local on this note thing?” I asked.

  “We’re not looking for anyone in particular right now,” Gilroy answered. “Just gathering information.”

  “Were you two living in town when all this happened?”

  “I’d just become police chief,” Gilroy said.

  “And I was an officer,” Hammond said. “Just like I am now.”

  Gilroy threw Hammond a quick look—too quick for me to read with accuracy, but it wasn’t an expression of approval.

  “How many people reported getting notes?” I asked.

  “Give me a call if you see or hear anything.”

  Most people display awkward mannerisms when avoiding questions they don’t want to answer. A twitch of the lips, a telltale nose scratch. Not Gilroy. He kept on trucking. My question wasn’t even a speed bump in his road.

  I shut the door behind them and watched them jog down my steps and hop into their SUV, its side emblazoned with the words “Juniper Grove Police Department” in blue letters. In a town this size, were Gilroy and Hammond the only police? I didn’t know. But I surmised that Gilroy and Hammond hardly ever dealt with crime, and I wondered if George Foster had survived his raft trip and escaped because of their inexperience.

  Foster’s body had never been found. Wasn’t that uncommon? If he had taken that raft trip with Mitch Dillard, and Dillard’s body had been found, why hadn’t Foster’s? More important, had Julia considered the possibility that her husband was still alive?

  Another thought occurred to me as I undid the twine from Holly’s bakery box: Julia might have been covering for her husband all these years. I shook my head, dismissing the notion. Julia didn’t have a sneaky bone in her body, let alone the guile to help fake her husband’s death and shield his ill-gotten money.

  I took a large bite of the cream puff, its filling oozing out the sides as I dug in. Holly was a wizard, and her puff pastry was the best I had ever tasted, hands down. I knew what her cream puffs were doing to my waistline—how much had I gained since moving to town?—and frankly, I didn’t care.

  Not true. I cared a little. I’d started gaining weight in Boston and I’d doubled down in Juniper Grove. Before I knew it, I’d put on
twenty pounds, maybe more. Tomorrow I’d hike the trail behind my house, no excuses. I put the cream puff in the refrigerator as a treat after what I was sure would be a troublesome investigation in town. If I was going to help Julia, I’d need to poke around, and I had a feeling I was going to put a few noses out of joint.

  I grabbed my car keys from a hook by the back door and headed down the narrow brick path that led to my garage, a detached shed of sorts behind my house.

  “First question,” I said out loud as I drove down Finch Hill Road on my way downtown, “who got the notes? Second question, what connection did any of them, or all of them, have to the bank theft and disappearance of George Foster?”

  I was heading for Holly’s Sweets on Main Street, a three-minute drive from my house. Holly had found one of the notes on her door, and she was likely to possess more unbiased information about the events of seven years ago than Julia. Besides, her bakery, which opened before any other shop downtown, was a repository of town gossip. People stopped by for a muffin or scone on their way to work and opened up to her. Fortunately for those people, Holly herself was not a spreader of gossip. But she was Julia’s friend, and if she had heard something that might help us find the note writer, she would tell me.

  The morning rush had ended, and only one customer remained in the bakery, a fifty-something woman with dark auburn hair cut in a bob. The first thing I noticed about a person, man or woman, was the hair. I don’t know why, except maybe my own hair—dark with streaks of gray, limp, shoulder length, and plain—was a continual source of frustration to me.

  When Holly saw me, she smiled and greeted me as just another customer, inviting me to examine the fresh cakes under glass domes on her countertop as though I’d called earlier and ordered one. She didn’t need to ask twice. Swaths of frosting—pink, white, chocolate, and buttercream, probably. I was so enchanted by the cakes I didn’t notice the woman with the bobbed hair was leaving until I heard the bakery door’s bell ring.

  Holly leaned forward, her arms on the counter, and began to talk excitedly. “Well that’s timing for you. Can you believe she was in here?”

  “Who is she?”

  “Oh, of course.” She waved her hands, shooing away her foolish question. “I keep forgetting you’re new here. It seems like I’ve known you for years.”

  I grinned. What a nice thing for her to say.

  “Anyway,” Holly went on, “that was Belinda Almond. To cut to the chase, she was having an affair with George Foster in the months before he died.”

  “No.” I was stunned. And I felt protective of Julia, though I knew nothing about her marriage. How dare he do that to her? If George had been there, I’d have given him what for. “Did Julia know?”

  “She did.” Holly came around the counter, marched for the shop window, and glanced up and down the sidewalk before spinning back to me. She had news, and she needed to tell me before another customer arrived.

  “Was Belinda Almond connected to the bank theft?” I asked.

  Holly lifted her shoulders. “That’s what a lot of people want to know. What I do know is Belinda got one of those notes this morning.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “She was royally upset, kept talking about being dragged back in to the whole thing and how she thought she was finally free of it.”

  “That’s how Julia feels.”

  “I almost said that to her.”

  “You didn’t tell her about Julia’s note?”

  “Never. Belinda’s a customer, and I treat her with civility, but I don’t like her. I’m sorry to say that, but what she did to Julia was terrible.”

  “Who else knows about Belinda’s affair with George?”

  Holly gave a small shake of her head. “In this little town? Everyone. Especially after seven years.”

  “Doesn’t Belinda feel uncomfortable with everyone knowing that?”

  “You would think.”

  “That’s probably why she’s upset—I mean, aside from getting the note.”

  “Because people will start talking again.”

  And keep on talking, I thought. Because this note writer wasn’t going to stop. Whoever it was, he hadn’t placed all those notes on all those doors just to drop it now and go away. He had a plan and was just getting started.

  “That’s not all,” Holly said. “A young man, maybe in his early twenties, was in here half an hour ago. I’ve never seen him before, and I know everyone in town. He asked me what happened to our former mayor, and I said he died two years ago. He seemed disappointed. Not sad, but like he missed an opportunity. I started to tell him we have a new mayor, Douglas McDermott, but he interrupted and asked me about Chief Gilroy. He asked if I thought he was a good cop.”

  “And you said . . . ?”

  “I said yes, he’s good, and our almost nonexistent crime rate is proof of it.” Holly paused for effect. “He laughed at me. Brayed like a donkey. It gave me the creeps, Rachel.”

  I walked to one of the small tables on the bakery’s far wall and sat. “Chief Gilroy and Officer Hammond were on the force when George Foster and Mitch Dillard stole that money.” I was stating what Holly already knew, but I needed to get the facts straight in my mind. “And a note was taped to the police department’s door?” I looked to Holly for confirmation.

  “That’s right,” she said, taking the chair across from mine.

  “And the mayor got a note, but on his office door, not on his home.”

  “Right. McDermott himself told me that. He was my first customer, early this morning. He saw the note on his way here, taped to the door of his office building.”

  “And the town attorney?”

  “Tom Ventura. He was in this morning too, only he woke up to one of those notes on the front door of his house, like I did.”

  “He told you?”

  “By then I’d heard about McDermott and the police department, so I asked him if he’d heard about this note people were finding around town. His eyes popped, but he looked relieved to talk about it.”

  “What was Tom Ventura doing seven years ago?”

  “He was town attorney back then too.”

  “So the only new face is McDermott.”

  “He was around back then, but he wasn’t mayor. What are you thinking?”

  “I need to write all this down.” It was how I solved problems—in real life or in novels. I had to write things down, organize, see the facts before me on paper.

  “So many new names for you to remember. Do you think we’ll solve this mystery?”

  I answered with conviction. “Yes, I think so.” But with growing anxiety, I sensed that the annoying notes would soon be the least of our worries. “Would you ask around, see if you can find out who that young man is?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Julia was staring at the pen I’d given her, turning it over in her hands. “You’re both wonderful for helping me, but I don’t think I can add anything. I woke up, went outside to sit on the porch, and found the note on my door, that’s all.”

  “If we’re going to solve this,” I said, handing her a notepad, “we need to talk about more than what you found taped to your door. This didn’t start with anonymous notes.” I gave Holly a pen and notepad too and then took a seat at my kitchen table.

  “I suppose not,” Julia reluctantly agreed. “It started seven years ago.”

  “Though I have a suspicion we’ve already found the note writer,” I added.

  Holly straightened. “That strange man in my bakery, by any chance?”

  “What strange man?” Julia asked.

  “Did you find out who he was?” I asked.

  “He’s staying at the Lilac Lane Bed and Breakfast—under the name Joe Smith.” Holly folded her arms and shot me a knowing look. “Joe Smith. Sure.”

  “I figured as much,” I said, making note of the name on my legal pad. “How did you find out?”

  “A friend who owns Grove Coffee talked to him, loosened his tongue with
caffeine.”

  Julia huffed. “Is someone going to tell me?”

  I quickly explained how Holly had met this Joe Smith, a stranger in town, adding, “He thought the old mayor was still alive and still the mayor. Holly said he seemed disappointed to learn he wasn’t. I think he was disappointed to find out his note on the mayor’s office targeted the wrong man.”

  “But the other notes hit the right targets,” Holly said.

  “I think so.”

  “Why would a stranger do this?” Julia said.

  “He may be a stranger to Juniper Grove,” I said, “but somehow he’s connected to what happened seven years ago. We’ll find out.”

  “It’s going to be the talk of the town,” Julia said. “How many people or places got these wretched notes?”

  “Six,” Holly said.

  Julia counted off on her fingers. Looking bewildered, she counted again. “How so?”

  Holly lowered her voice, as if whispering would soften the blow. “Belinda Almond got one.”

  Julia’s eyes squeezed shut. “Not her too.”

  It was then I realized how tired my normally energetic neighbor looked. And I began to see that this battle with the past was probably why she had seemed so irritable since I’d first moved in next door. She had to have been dealing with the courts for months prior to the final ruling, and now some coward was holding her up to town ridicule. Judging by Holly’s description, Joe Smith was not a kind man, and if I was right about him being the note writer, Julia was in for more trouble.

  “You’re very brave for letting us dredge this up again,” I said. “It can’t be easy.”

  “I asked you to do it, and I’m going to see it through,” she said, her chin rising in defiance. “Let people think what they want. And if they have opinions, they had better keep them to themselves.”

  Most of the time Julia had a grandmotherly air about her, and I liked that, but every now and then she transformed into someone you did not want to mess with. I liked that too. “First we need to find out who Joe Smith really is,” I said.

  “How do we do that?” Holly asked.