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I opened my eyes, reached for my cell phone, and peeked at the screen—7:23. Sheesh, I was going to have to start setting an alarm. I would have to hop to it in order to make and deliver all the jewelry I needed to that day.
Bleary-eyed, I slogged to the kitchen. With a punch of a button, I got the coffee brewing, then I quickly scrolled through the morning’s emails and my Facebook feed. After the brew was ready, I spooned some Greek yogurt into a vintage Pyrex berry bowl, sprinkled strawberry-and-dark-chocolate granola on top, and scarfed it down.
By eight o’clock, I was dressed in jeans and a cozy blue sweater and seated at the kitchen table, coffee and supplies at hand, ready to create another dozen Ruby & Doris bracelets. After the vintage designs had been such a big hit at the bazaar, I wanted plenty of stock for the Foothills Gallery and Michele’s shop.
A plastic bag of my latest junk jewelry from Making Memories sat before me, and I reached into it to fish out the best vintage clip-on earrings to embellish the bracelets. I heard a crunch of gravel at the kitchen door, then I stood up and peeked out the window—Michele was hurrying up the driveway.
I opened the door. “This is a surprise. Who’s running the store?”
“The Christmas helpers are full-time these days, so I can take some time off when I need to.” She looked troubled. “Have you got a few minutes? I really need to talk this out with someone.”
“Have a seat.” I gestured to the table, where we both sat down.
Michele took a deep breath. “It’s about Miranda Hargrove. You know I didn’t care for her.”
I nodded.
“But you also know I didn’t kill her, right?”
I held a spool of elastic beading cord in midair. “Have you been accused of something?”
She frowned. “Not directly. But you remember the other morning when that customer told you what her friend overheard Gerald say at the bazaar?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“After you took that info to the police department, Alan Shelton stopped by. Silly me, I thought he was there to Christmas shop.”
“He wasn’t?”
She shook her head. “Somebody, and I can’t figure out who, told him about my run-in with Miranda over the way she treated Austin.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, good grief. Nobody in their right mind would accuse you of murder because of that.”
“Somehow the police got wind of it. Alan wanted to know what time I got to the bazaar, where I went while I was there, the time I left, and if anyone could vouch for where I was after the show.”
“Surely Wells can tell him when you got home and—”
“But I didn’t go straight home.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Because?”
“Because I drove to Atlanta to pick up a Christmas gift for Wells. He and Austin were visiting the railway museum in Duluth all afternoon, so I knew I wouldn’t be missed. There’s a shop in Acworth that sells all of Wells’s favorite imported English goods—like the socks and handkerchiefs he’s so fond of—and I’d arranged to meet the shop owner at closing time to pick up my order.”
“Then can’t the shop owner vouch for your whereabouts?”
“She’s gone back to London until after Christmas, and I don’t know the people who run the place in her absence.”
I sighed.
Michele’s eyes widened. “And the more I think about the murder, the more I think Gerald could’ve done it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious. In fact, if you can take a short break...”
“What?”
“I was thinking of driving over to Gerald’s house to see if he’s still living in his mom’s basement.”
Michele was going a little cray-cray. “Do you have some reason to doubt him?”
“Have you ever seen her?”
“No, but I’m not exactly part of Gerald’s inner circle.”
“Hear me out. I’m just saying he strikes me as the kind of guy who could be all lovey-dovey with pets then have his mama’s body locked in the basement freezer.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, that’s—”
“Five minutes. That’s all it’ll take.”
“How do you propose we check this out, Miss Marple? What’ll we say if Gerald shows up and sees us snooping around his house?”
She threw up her hands. “Won’t be a problem. I saw him at the post office this morning, and he said he was headed to Atlanta for the day on business, so it’s the perfect time to nose around. It’s just a few streets away, so run over there with me.”
If it’ll get her off my back, why not? “Your car or mine?”
Michele smiled for the first time that morning. “Mine. I backed it into your driveway, hoping you’d say that.”
As we buckled up in her SUV, she told me she’d already looked up Gerald’s address in her store records. True to her word, we were at his house in five minutes. No vehicles were in the driveway. Michele parked on the street and jerked her head at me. “Follow my lead.”
We walked to the front door, and she pressed the doorbell button. I hoped she had planned what to say, because I had no idea how to ask some nice old lady whether her son was a murderer.
No one answered. Michele rang the doorbell again, and a female voice called out, “Hold your horses, people!”
Click. The door opened but only wide enough for us to see a length of chain and an attractive gray-haired woman peering out from behind it.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Mrs. Adams?”
“I am. Why? Nothing’s happened to Gerald, has it?”
“Oh no, ma’am.” Michele shook her head. “I’m Michele Fairchild from the Feathered Nest downtown”—she handed over her business card—“and this is Emma Madison, another local business owner.”
I dipped my head in acknowledgment.
“She designs jewelry that’s in all the best shops in the area.”
I appreciated the plug, even if the circumstances were less than ideal.
Michele continued, “We’re friends with Gerald, and as big-time pet lovers, we were thinking of making a gift to the Humane Society in his honor this Christmas. We wondered whether that would be a good idea or if he would prefer something more personal.”
The chain came down, and the door whipped open. “How thoughtful! My Gerald would love for you to donate to the society in his honor. Listen, would you ladies like to come in and have a cup of coffee? I’ve got a pot brewing in my apartment down in the basement.”
“You live in the basement?” Michele asked.
The woman chuckled. “Ironic, isn’t it? But yes, Gerald renovated it last year and set me up in my own apartment. Hired an interior decorator and everything. Not many sons are thoughtful enough to do that for their mother, are they? Now won’t you come in for a cup of coffee?”
I gave Michele the side-eye. I hadn’t signed up for a coffee klatch with Gerald’s mama.
“Maybe some other time, Mrs. Adams. We’ve both got businesses to run, but you’ve been a huge help. And please, we want to keep this a surprise for Gerald.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, I won’t say a word.”
Michele and I said our goodbyes, and I held my tongue until we got in the car. “Happy now? Mrs. Adams looks pretty good for a woman who’s been living in the basement freezer, don’t you think?”
Michele glared at me then drove down the street. “Don’t be so crabby. At least now we know. And since—” We were almost to my house when she looked over my shoulder at something, hit the brakes, and pulled to the curb.
I followed her gaze, and Shareta Gibson was jogging by in hunter-green sweats as she tried to keep up with her chocolate Labrador retriever. I caught her eye and waved as Michele rolled down the window.
“Morning, Shareta!” She leaned over me. “Who’ve you got with you here?”
Shareta halted with her dog, and once again, I was envious that Miriam wasn’t the kind of pet that could join me in the great outdoors.
“This is Indiana Jones—Indy, for short. He loves to go on adventures.”
He was certainly a handsome boy.
“So what are you two up to?” Shareta leaned in and cocked her head at me.
“Just running a few errands.” Michele looked at the cloudy sky. “Think you’ll get your run in before the rain comes?”
Shareta smiled. “We’re gonna try.”
“They say it’s bringing cooler weather with it, and I’m glad. Guess we’d better let you get back to your run, then. Have a good one.”
As we pulled away, Michele rolled up the window. “I still can’t believe Miranda told her to change the colors of her baskets. Good grief. Didn’t the woman know how offensive that would be to an artist?”
“You heard about that too?”
“Oh yeah. Shareta was hot about it. She was in the shop yesterday and mentioned it. And Miranda hadn’t been very nice to her when she first applied for the bazaar either.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.” Michele made the turn into my driveway, so I was only minutes away from getting back to work. “Something about how miniature African baskets might not do so well at a Christmas bazaar.”
“Why on earth not?”
Michele shrugged. “Who knows why Miranda saw anything the way she did?”
She turned off the engine. “Thanks for going with me, but I’d better get back to the shop. I guess I was wrong, and Gerald didn’t make up a story about his mother living with him, but oh well. I’m just ready to find out who killed Miranda so that we can all move on.”
“And we can get that donation on its way to the foster kids.”
“Is that in question?”
I nodded. “Latest I’m hearing is that the city is asking for an audit before any money from the bazaar goes out.”
After promising to see her the next evening at her open house, I sped inside to get out of the mist and spotted a familiar-looking blue-and-white bubble mailer propped against the kitchen door. Amazon must have dropped off that spool of copper jewelry wire I’d ordered the other day. How odd that they would leave it by the kitchen door, though.
As the floodgates unleashed, I scooped up the package, unlocked the door to dash inside, and set the package on the kitchen table. I shrugged out of my jacket and shuddered from the sudden chill.
When I turned on the electric teakettle to heat some water, Miriam sauntered into the kitchen. “Hi there, beautiful.” I reached down and petted the silky-soft fur on my feline friend. “Did you miss me?”
She meowed.
Once I’d prepared a cup of Japanese sencha, my favorite green tea, I reached for some scissors and sliced open the package, but oddly, the end was taped over as if the mailer had been used before. The only thing inside was a piece of paper. Did they bungle my order and forget to place the wire inside? Then I noticed that the mailer had no address label on it, only the sticky remnants where a label had once been attached.
I unfolded the paper, and it was a résumé for the late Miranda Hargrove—except it listed her last name as Horgrave. The name of her last employer was circled in red marker, and the job wasn’t the one I’d expected—assistant manager of a discount clothing store at a mall in Pittsford, New York.
Perplexed, I read the rest of the résumé, and a picture began to emerge. Miranda Horgrave hadn’t been a successful downtown development staffer after all. She wasn’t even from New York. According to the sheet of paper, she’d graduated from high school in Virginia, taken classes at a community college for two months, and gone straight to work at the mall in Pittsford, which a quick online search revealed was a suburb of Rochester. She’d apparently volunteered once for a fundraiser with the Happy Hometown program in Rochester, but that was it. And there was nothing wrong with any of that experience—except that she’d apparently lied about it.
After shoving a few jewelry supplies out of the way, I retrieved my laptop from the living room and made room for it on the kitchen table. I searched for Miranda Horgrave in Pittsford, New York, and after clicking through a few press releases in which she was listed as the contact for various store promotions, there it was—a photo of Miranda with a Jennifer Aniston “Rachel” haircut in a photo that looked at least ten years old. And she was indeed Horgrave.
I clicked through another page of links and found one that led to an article in a Pittsford community newspaper. “Pittsford Woman Arrested for DUI,” it read. According to the police report, Miranda Horgrave had been spotted weaving between lanes around eleven thirty on a February evening several years before. Her blood alcohol level was .08.
I did another search for Miranda Horgrave, adding the words Pittsford and DUI, and I learned she’d been sentenced to community service. No further charges came up in my search, so perhaps that arrest was a one-time deal.
As fascinating as it was to discover that Miranda Hargrove-slash-Horgrave hadn’t been who she’d claimed to be, I found some disturbing questions bobbing around in my head: Why did I get a copy of her résumé? Who delivered it? And more important, what am I supposed to do with it?
Actually, I knew full well what I was going to do with it. I would swallow my pride and pay Detective Alan Shelton another visit to turn over the mailer and the sheet of paper. But first, I scanned the résumé with the Notes app on my cell phone and saved a copy of it. Just because I wasn’t officially investigating didn’t mean I wasn’t curious.