CHAPTER 27

My brain was buzzing like crazy as I put the birthday cake in the breakroom refrigerator at Holt’s. All I could think was that I’d been wrong.

Carrie hadn’t murdered Asha—though she’d probably wanted to. Dena, her mom, had done it.

I was sure I was right this time.

But I had been sure yesterday when I’d told Shuman my oh-so brilliant theory and insisted he check out Asha’s computer and show up here today to arrest Carrie.

No way could I be wrong again.

I dashed off a text message to Bella, letting her know we’d have the party later this afternoon, and hurried out of the breakroom.

I couldn’t bring myself to call Shuman, backpedal, and insist he listen to my I-know-who-did-it-and-this-time-I’m-right idea. I needed to find some evidence. Something concrete that would prove Dena had shot and killed Asha.

I could think of only one place to find it.

I left Holt’s and headed down the sidewalk toward the craft store. I spotted Jack on the other side of the parking lot, talking to two guys who I figured were from his security team.

For a few seconds I thought about bringing Jack in on this, letting him know that I’d learned Dena and Carrie were mother and daughter and that I knew—okay, strongly suspected—the true circumstances surrounding Asha’s murder. But I’d already shot off my mouth to Jack. I didn’t want to be wrong in front of him again.

Dena was outside her store; the door was propped open. She’d rolled several sets of display shelves onto the sidewalk and was busy moving merchandise onto them from a smaller version of a Holt’s U-boat.

I had to play this carefully—I wasn’t exactly known for my subtlety or finesse.

What I needed was evidence, so I had to get inside Dena’s store and find it, somehow, without giving her the idea that I suspected her of anything. After all, she owned a gun and had already shot her husband. If I was right, she’d shot Asha, too.

I doubted she’d think twice about shooting me.

“Hi, again,” I said, stopping next to her.

She looked up, surprised. “Oh, hi.”

I tried for an I-don’t-really-suspect-you-of-murder smile, but wasn’t sure I really pulled it off.

“We’re having a little birthday party for one of the girls at Holt’s. That’s why I needed the cake from Carrie,” I said. “So I wanted to pick up some party supplies. You know, balloons, streamers, some paper plates, that kind of thing.”

“Sure,” Dena said. “Let me show you what I have.”

“No, no, you don’t have to do that,” I told her. “You’re busy and I don’t want to keep you from what you’re doing. I’ll find them.”

I didn’t give her a chance to say anything before I slipped past her into the store.

Two older women were in the scrapbooking section, loading a handbasket with supplies. I didn’t see a sales clerk.

I made a big show of looking up and down at the merchandise, then glanced back at the entrance. Dena was focused on the displays. I hurried to the rear of the store to the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, and dashed inside.

The stockroom was a fraction of the size of the one at Holt’s, with a dozen tall shelving units packed with all sorts of new merchandise waiting to be displayed. I made my way through them and spotted an office area with a desk, a chair, a computer, and a printer. Two tall filing cabinets bracketed the store’s rear exit door, stacked high with binders and catalogs. Notices, bulletins, and flyers were pinned to a corkboard over the desk. Everything looked neat and tiny, well organized.

I had only a few minutes in there before Dena would likely realize I hadn’t picked out party supplies yet and would come looking for me. I had to move fast.

Shuman had told me Dena had a permit to carry concealed so it was likely she kept the weapon on her, which meant it was here somewhere. I was positive it was the gun that had been used in Asha’s murder. All I had to do was find it and call Shuman. I’d let him worry about search warrants, chain of custody, and LAPD’s proper procedures for gathering evidence.

The two file cabinets looked like a great place to hide a gun. No way did I want to leave my fingerprints on anything, so I yanked my sleeve over my hand and pulled open the top drawer of one of the file cabinets. Inside were papers tucked neatly into files. Same with the second drawer, and the third.

I reached for the handle of the fourth drawer. Voices.

I froze. My heartbeat shot up.

Oh my God, what was I going to tell Dena if she walked in a caught me? How would I explain myself?

I swallowed hard and strained to listen.

The voices faded away. I figured it must have been the two women who’d been shopping in the scrapbooking section moving past the stockroom door.

Jeez, I really hope that’s what it was.

I turned back to the file cabinets. Lots more drawers to go.

I grabbed another handle and it hit me—I was looking in the wrong place.

Dena had accidentally shot her husband when her pistol, inside her handbag, had gone off. She had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. If she’d shot Asha after a confrontation near the Holt’s loading dock—likely an unplanned meeting—that meant Dena kept her gun with her all the time, inside her handbag.

I eyed the desk. In my office at L.A. Affairs, I always stowed my handbag in the large, bottom desk drawer. Keeping my fingers inside my sweater sleeve, I rolled the drawer open.

Inside was a non-designer handbag—which was disturbing enough—and among the jumble of Dena’s personal items, tucked into a special strap, was a .38 handgun.

Oh my God, I’d found it.

I had to call Shuman. He had to get here right away—or maybe he was already here, interviewing Carrie.

I swung around and reached for my cell phone.

Dena stood between the shelving units.

Her gaze dropped to the open desk drawer, then bounced up to me again.

“You killed Asha,” I said.

“You have no proof,” she told me.

“Detective Shuman will be here any minute. He’ll see your gun and do a ballistics test. It will show—”

Dena grabbed a large wicker basket from the shelving unit and heaved it at me. I batted it away, but she was right behind it and shoved me aside. I fell against one of the file cabinets and my flailing arm struck the other one. I spun around as she pulled the pistol from her handbag.

“What gun?” Dena asked, pointing it at me. “By the time anyone arrives, this thing will be long gone. Now, step away from the door.”

No way was I letting her escape so she could destroy evidence.

I dropped my arms onto each of the file cabinets, blocking the door.

“You thought you could get away with murder,” I said. “Again.”

“You mean that man I was married to?” Dena uttered a disgusted grunt. “I was cleared of all charges.”

“But you murdered him, didn’t you?” I said.

“It was an unfortunate accident,” she insisted, then smirked. “Unfortunate for him that I found out about his string of girlfriends.”

Oh my God, she’d really killed her husband.

“So that made it easier for you to kill Asha,” I said.

“Some people deserve to die,” Dena said. “She tried to ruin my daughter’s bakery—and just when things were starting to go well for us.”

“Us?”

Dena lowered her voice, as if we were gossiping over lunch, and said, “Carrie was a difficult child, especially after I divorced her father. She was a difficult teenager, always with problems. I tried to deal with her, and I did the best I could, but things were strained between us—until I bought her that bakery.”

“With your husband’s life insurance?” I asked.

“She insisted it was the only thing that would make her happy. She wanted to own a bakery. I didn’t have that kind of money until . . .” Dena paused. “Well, let’s just say the timing was perfect.”

“So, then, everything was going along fine?” I said.

“Yes, finally. Finally. Finally we were getting along. We were talking, making plans, discussing our businesses. Finally she was happy.”

“Then Asha wrote that awful review.”

Dena’s expression darkened. “What a little sneak. Going to work at the bakery, pretending to be Carrie’s friend, then stabbing her in the back.”

I nodded to the door behind me and said, “You must have spotted Asha out back, having a smoke near the loading dock. You went down there and confronted her.”

“I went there to talk,” Dena insisted. “She’d been into the bakery the day before. Can you imagine the gall? Waltzing into Carrie’s shop all friendly-like.”

I knew that Asha had been in Holt’s the day before she was murdered, when she’d had that argument with Valerie Roderick near the customer service booth. Asha had probably been there to shop, but I suspected she’d been at the shopping center for a very different reason.

“What did she want?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew.

“She had the nerve—the nerve—to tell Carrie that if she wanted to be sure nothing bad was said about her bakery, she could take out an ad on her website.”

Wow, I’d been right.

It wasn’t much consolation, with Dena still pointing that gun at me.

“Do you have any idea how much money I had to pour into that bakery for advertising, special promotions, and discounted prices to make up for that awful review?” Dena demanded.

“Carrie agreed to pay for the ad?”

“What choice did she have?” Dena shook her head. “I couldn’t go through that with Carrie again. I couldn’t.”

“Asha came back the next day to finalize the ad with Carrie,” I said, which was a guess on my part, but it made sense. “You spotted her out back by the Dumpster.”

“Oh, yes, there she was having a leisurely smoke, not at all concerned that she was about the ruin another business.” Dena spit out the words as if they were bitter on her tongue, then paused and drew in a long breath. “I wanted to make sure that, after Carrie bought that ad, Asha didn’t have any intentions of writing more lies about the bakery. And, of course, I wanted to tell Carrie she didn’t have to worry about Asha ever again.”

“How’d that work out?” I asked. I already knew the answer. I wanted to keep Dena talking until I could figure out how to get out of this mess.

Dena seemed to get lost in thought for a few minutes, remembering, I figured, how it had gone down with Asha.

“She had no intention of settling for just one ad, right? It would never have ended,” I said. “So you ended it.”

“What else could I do?” she said. “Call the police? Take legal action? Wait for months, and all the while Asha’s was still writing those horrible reviews?”

“You shot Asha.”

Dena nodded slowly, then locked the gun in a two-handed grip and said, “And now, I’m going to have to shoot you, too.”

I grabbed one of the binders from the top of the file cabinet and threw it at her. The gun went off. A bullet whizzed past my head.

No way was I giving her a chance to get off another shot.

I lurched forward and grabbed her arm, pushing it away. Dena whirled around, dragging me with her. I stumbled over the leg of the chair and hit the floor hard. Another shot rang out, this one burying into the desk.

I scrambled to my feet. Dena danced backwards, following my movement with the gun. I flung the chair at her, striking her in the knees, and jumped to the side.

“Put the gun down!”

Jack appeared among the shelving units. Dena swung the gun his way.

I threw myself at her, a full-body blow, knocking her down. We landed hard on the floor, Dena facedown, me on top. I grabbed her wrists with both hands. Dena bucked and wiggled, trying to throw me off.

Just when I was considering grabbing a handful of her hair for a fight-ending face-plant, a CAT boot came down on Dena’s gun hand. She screamed. I was jerked upward, off of her.

“I’ll take it from here,” Shuman said, letting go of me.

He whipped out handcuffs. Jack helped secured her wrists, then turned to me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

No, I wasn’t okay. My heart raced, my adrenaline pumped, and parts of me were in pain.

I guess Jack realized that because he pulled me close and wrapped both arms around me.

Okay, now I was better.

“How did you know something was wrong?” I asked, looking up at him.

“When I was in the parking lot I saw you walk into this place,” Jack said. “I had a feeling something was up, so I came over. I heard the shots.”

“I was next door talking to Carrie,” Shuman said, looking angry. “You shouldn’t have come in here alone, Haley. You shouldn’t have put yourself in this dangerous position. What were you thinking?”

“You should have told me what you were doing,” Jack said, sounding none too happy with me. “I was right outside. Right there in the parking lot. Why didn’t you let me know?”

Jeez, I solved a murder, saved Jack from being shot, and this was the thanks I got?

I pushed away from Jack.

“Don’t act like this is all my fault,” I told them. “You two are the ones who insisted on having some evidence.”

That shut them up.

“Clean up this mess,” I said, waving my arms around. “I have a birthday party to go to.”

I left.