A Crafty Killing Read online

  “The whole Square has already heard about poor Ezra’s passing. Naturally, we’re all in shock. He was the Merchants Association’s driving force, you know. I don’t know how we’ll manage without him. I expect you’ll be in charge of Artisans Alley’s affairs, won’t you?”

  “For now,” Katie admitted.

  “You’re not going to close the Alley, are you?” Gilda asked, an edgy note coloring her tone.

  “For today, at least. Long term ... I don’t know.”

  Gilda nodded over the roof of Katie’s car. “There’s already a crew from Channel Nine rolling tape. I’ll speak to them on behalf of the merchants.” She sighed, clasping her hands. “Ezra would’ve jumped at the chance for this kind of publicity. For the Alley and the Square, I mean.”

  She was right about that. And Ezra’s PR efforts had paid off. He’d turned a decrepit warehouse into an artists’ cooperative. On the strength of his labors, the surrounding houses had been converted to boutiques and specialty shops like Gilda’s Gourmet Baskets.

  The result was Victoria Square—a budding tourist destination on the cusp of becoming truly successful. With decent marketing, its gaslights and the charming gingerbread facades on the buildings could bring in visitors on their way to Niagara Falls, some eighty miles west, as well as customers from nearby Rochester, New York.

  “Artisans Alley’s our anchor,” Gilda continued, her voice firm. “The rest of us need it to pull in shoppers and keep us afloat.”

  That was a rather cold assessment of the situation. Had Gilda forgotten that a man had been killed?

  “The Merchants Association will probably call an emergency meeting in the next day or so,” Gilda continued. “I hope you’ll come.”

  “I’ll try.” Katie caught sight of the dashboard clock, realizing she still hadn’t called her boss to explain her absence.

  As though taking the hint, Gilda straightened. “I’ll let you know about the meeting. In the meantime, I’m so sorry about Ezra. I just hope his death isn’t a fatal blow to Victoria Square, too.”

  The woman turned on her heel and walked back to her store. With no one else coming her way, Katie realized she could no longer avoid the inevitable, again flipped open her phone, and punched in her work number. It rang once, twice.

  “Kimper Insurance, Josh Kimper speaking.”

  “Josh, it’s Katie—”

  “Where the hell are you?” he bellowed, so loud she had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Do you realize there’s no coffee and I’ve got a client meeting in five minutes?”

  “Sorry, Josh, but my late husband’s business partner was killed overnight. As minority owner, I’ll have to take care of things at Artisans Alley here in McKinlay Mill for at least today.”

  “I don’t appreciate a last-minute call like this, Katie,” Josh barked.

  Katie bit back her anger. “I’m sure Ezra didn’t plan on being murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “The police think it may have happened during a robbery attempt last night.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, with no hint of sympathy. “But you can’t let this affect your life.”

  Katie knew Josh meant he didn’t want Ezra’s murder to affect his life.

  Josh Kimper’s abrasive personality alone qualified him as the boss from hell. He’d given Katie a job as office manager when she’d been desperate for work with flexible hours while finishing her graduate degree. Four years later Josh liked to remind her of it on a daily—if not hourly—basis. Since Chad’s death, he’d gotten used to her putting in fifty- and sometimes sixty-hour weeks. Katie had preferred immersing herself in office routine rather than facing her empty apartment—her empty life. And, she wasn’t ashamed to admit, she needed the overtime money.

  Paying a good salary was Josh’s carrot to keep her at the agency. She made much less than Josh, of course, but then, he was the talent, as he so often liked to tell her. That left Katie with the drudgery.

  “The coffee’s in the cabinet. I brought in homemade chocolate chip cookies yesterday. They’re in the jar on the counter. Put them on a plate, lay out napkins, and everything will be fine.”

  “You’d better be in tomorrow,” Josh grated. “We can’t let the filing go for more than a day.”

  You could always do it yourself, she thought, but held her tongue. “I’ll tell you my plans as soon as I know them.”

  “And I’m not paying you for today either,” he said.

  “Then I’ll take a day of vacation. I still have more than a week left.”

  “And you always wait until it’s inconvenient to take it. You’d better be here tomorrow,” Josh ordered again and hung up.

  Eyes narrowed, Katie stuck out her tongue at the phone.

  “Do you always end your conversations that way?” came an amused male voice from outside her still-opened window.

  Chagrined, Katie stabbed the phone’s power button and forced a smile for Deputy Schuler. “Only on days like today.”

  “This is Detective Ray Davenport, our lead investigator.” Schuler stepped away, revealing the stocky, balding man Katie had seen earlier. She eyed the ratty raincoat. Was he trying to channel an old Columbo rerun?

  Davenport nodded at her. “Ma’am.”

  Or maybe he was channeling Joe Friday.

  Katie studied the detective’s nondescript face, wondering if his no-nonsense demeanor was a defense mechanism he’d erected to shield him from the results of the violence he saw on a regular basis. Or could it be he was just grumpy? But then, grumpy was an apt description of her current emotional state.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?” Katie asked, trying to be helpful.

  The older man opened a worn notebook and took a pen from the inside pocket of his raincoat. “Did the deceased—uh, Mr. Hilton—have any family?”

  “Deceased.” The word made it sound so ... permanent. Then again, it was.

  “Apparently Ezra had a nephew. His lawyer is contacting him,” Katie said.

  “And that man’s name is?” Davenport prompted.

  “Sorry, I don’t know.” She gave him Seth’s name and phone number, which he dutifully jotted down.

  “Did Mr. Hilton always close the place by himself?”

  Katie lifted her hands from her lap and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Davenport frowned. “Who might’ve seen the deceased last, ma’am?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t tell me—you don’t know,” Davenport supplied, slapping his notebook closed. “Would you have a list of all the vendors who rent space at Artisans Alley? We’ll want to talk to everyone to see if they saw something or can tell if anything else was taken from the building.”

  “I’m sure there’s a list somewhere in the office. I just don’t know where to put my hands on it. Ezra was pretty much a one-man show—from handling the paperwork, to arranging publicity, to manning the register if need be. From the looks of it, he may have spread himself far too thin.”

  “And that,” the detective said with a penetrating gaze, “could be what got him killed.”

  Two

  The doors to the medical examiner’s van slammed shut, intensifying Katie’s hollow sense of loss. Knowing they’d autopsy Ezra, cutting him open, removing his organs—desecrating his body—made her shudder.

  The vehicle’s engine roared to life, and the blue Suburban pulled out of the lot, heading back to the city.

  “Good-bye, Ezra,” Katie whispered, and stared at the vacant space for a long time before turning back to Victoria Square’s communal parking lot lined with rubberneckers, including customers and proprietors of all the boutiques. With the show now over, some of them were already skulking back into the warmth inside the shops.

  Katie shivered in the brisk autumn breeze. Lake Ontario was only a mile or so down the road, funneling a Canadian cold front their way. God, she felt empty.

  She retrieved another piece of candy from her skirt pocket, unwrapped it and
popped it into her mouth, and then bit into it, grinding it with her molars. Artisans Alley’s great hulk of a building looked even shabbier since Chad’s death. The faded painted sign over the entrance was covered in insect-dotted spiderwebs. Without Chad to spearhead the holiday decorations, not so much as a corn-stalk heralded the harvest season or Halloween only a week away.

  Chad had been a vendor at Artisans Alley for three or four years before his death—though he considered the booth filled with his paintings and artwork to be more of a hobby than a true moneymaking venture. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow artists, as well as the opportunity to expand his knowledge to market his work. Four months before his death, and without consulting Katie, he’d put up their combined savings for a ten percent interest in Artisans Alley.

  “The roof was in bad shape, and the bank wouldn’t give Ezra another loan,” Chad had calmly explained, as though jeopardizing their financial security was nothing for them to worry about.

  The Bonner marriage had foundered after that. For years they’d scrimped and saved, dreaming of owning and operating an upscale bed-and-breakfast—the English Ivy Inn—on or near Victoria Square, with Chad the amiable host and Katie serving as the power behind the scenes, managing the financial end as well as the day-to-day operations. The derelict Webster mansion on the east end of the Square was the perfect location. They’d plotted and planned for more than two years to buy it and had been on the verge of submitting a bid when dear, sweet, gullible Chad had fallen for Ezra’s sales pitch, convincing him Artisans Alley would quickly return their investment tenfold.

  So far, Katie hadn’t seen a dime.

  Not that Chad hadn’t worked at improving Artisans Alley’s bottom line. The addition of something as simple as arranging for the business to accept debit cards had made Artisans Alley more profitable within a month. But Chad had had to choose his battles carefully. Although a businessman for more than half a century, Ezra wasn’t eager to adopt newfangled ways. And he’d decreed the business remain an artisans-only arcade, which kept the booth rental at only seventy-five percent of capacity, at least during a good month.

  “Mrs. Bonner?”

  Katie turned. An elderly lady, her carefully coifed, honey blond hair covered by a plastic weather bonnet—more, Katie suspected, in deference to the wind than any threat of rain—had broken away from a knot of other old women on the fringe of the parking lot. Her wrinkled face gave testament to her decades on the planet. Pretty blue-and-white beaded earrings hung from her earlobes, with a matching necklace just showing at the base of her neck. Though lithe and spry in body, the old lady’s watery blue eyes were shadowed with grief. She held out her heavily veined hand. “I’m Rose Nash, one of Artisans Alley’s artists.”

  Katie gingerly took the woman’s hand, careful not to exert any pressure for fear of crushing the delicate bones under the crepe-like skin.

  “Everyone’s saying Ezra was murdered,” Rose said, her voice shaky with suppressed tears.

  “I’m afraid it looks that way.”

  Rose let out an anguished sigh, her brows puckering. “I’ve been at Artisans Alley since it opened twelve years ago. I speak for a lot of the artists when I say this place means more to us than just a business or a hobby. It’s our lives. Our social club. We’re family. What will we ever do without Ezra?”

  Katie didn’t know how to respond. Chad had been friends with these people—had socialized with them—while she had been intent on getting her degree and working and reworking a viable business plan for the English Ivy Inn. She sensed another pitch to keep the place open was on its way and wasn’t up to hearing it. “It’s too soon for me to make any decisions. I’ll have to wait to hear Ezra’s will and find out who the heirs are. For now, I’d like to keep the place open.” She didn’t add, until I can find a buyer.

  Rose’s look of joy was to be short-lived.

  “Only I can’t manage it,” Katie said.

  “Why not?” Rose asked, sounding almost childlike.

  “I have to support myself. My husband Chad’s investment in Artisans Alley never paid off. That’s why he had a full-time job teaching English at the McKinlay Mill High School.”

  “But there must be something we can do to keep it running,” Rose cried.

  “I suppose I’ll have to hire a manager. There’s still the problem of paying one. I haven’t had a chance to go through the books. All I can tell you is—”

  Rose’s look of anguish nearly broke Katie’s heart.

  “I’ll try.”

  Rose reached out, squeezed Katie’s shoulder. “God bless you, Mrs. Bonner.”

  “Call me Katie,” she insisted, feeling like a rat.

  Rose’s lips trembled and she glanced at the ugly old hodgepodge of a building. “We were all so sad when Chad passed. He loved Artisans Alley as much as the rest of us.”

  Katie’s throat tightened. Don’t weaken. Don’t let her—or anyone else—persuade you not to sell the place. You’ll end up living in your car if you do.

  Rose patted Katie’s arm and turned away, heading back to her waiting friends.

  Katie ducked under the crime-scene tape and reentered Artisans Alley. A pensive Deputy Schuler stood next to Detective Davenport. A six-by-six-foot chunk of carpet was missing at the bottom of the stairs where Ezra had fallen. Evidence, no doubt. What was left was a toe-snagging hazard for patrons who’d head for the twenty or so booths upstairs. She’d have to duct-tape the rough edges before they could open the store again.

  “You can go in the office now, ma’am,” Detective Davenport said. “I found a list of the artists and made a copy. Besides the cash, nothing else appears to have been taken or disturbed—but in a place like this, who can tell?”

  Who indeed. Every booth seemed to contain hundreds of items.

  “Of course, half your vendors will be calling us back, saying they’ve been robbed and demanding police reports to file with their insurance companies.”

  Katie frowned. “That’s a pretty cynical statement, Detective.”

  “Ma’am, I’ve been on the job twenty-eight years. I’ve seen it all and then some.”

  Katie squelched the sharp retort on her tongue. Instead she asked, “Did you find any fingerprints?”

  “A few. But they might turn out to be the victim’s—or any of the other artists who might have used the register yesterday. Can you come up with a list of likely candidates?”

  Katie shook her head. “I know in the past Vance Ingram was usually Ezra’s backup. I’m surprised he’s not already here. You could ask some of the other artists how to contact him. There still may be a few of them out in the parking lot.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Already Davenport’s bored monotone and his overuse of the word “ma’ am” began to annoy Katie.

  “Call me if you think of anything that might help us,” he said and handed her his card. He glanced up at the timbered ceiling. “Damn fire trap,” he muttered, shook his head, and took his leave.

  Katie scowled, suddenly feeling protective of the sprawling old building—Chad’s nightmare investment.

  “Are you leaving, too?” she asked Deputy Schuler.

  “I’ll be around, ma’am,” he said, and a ghost of a smile raised the corners of his mouth. “McKinlay Mill is part of my assigned patrol area.”

  Katie followed him into the wan sunlight. Sure enough, the group of elderly women was still camped out on the edges of the parking lot, and they seemed only too eager to answer any question Detective Davenport posed for them.

  Katie watched as Schuler got into his patrol car and drove away; then her attention turned back to Detective Davenport, who consulted his list of artists during his talk with the ladies. He spent only a couple of minutes conversing with the women, and then he turned for his own unmarked car.

  Rose Nash considered the people at Artisans Alley to be family. Why didn’t the detective try to wrangle the family gossip out of those women? He said he’d been on t
he job for twenty-eight years. If he was anywhere near retirement, he could just be going through the motions—not caring if he ever found out who killed Ezra. Was his lack of interest a symptom of short-timer’s syndrome or was he simply burned out—or worse, incompetent?

  Katie couldn’t help glaring at the detective as he pulled out of the parking lot. She and Ezra had never been pals, but even he deserved better than the disinterest this cop displayed.

  As she turned toward Artisans Alley, a curtain of depression settled around her shoulders. In addition to her regular job, Artisans Alley and all it entailed would be her responsibility, too.

  Swell.

  Ezra’s desk more resembled a junk heap than a place of business. Stacks of paper teetered precariously close to old cups of half-drunk coffee that grew science experiments and begged to be spilled. Katie itched to tidy the place, but first things first. She searched through the mess until she found a file marked “Accountant,” hauled out the Yellow Pages from under stacks of rubber-banded Artisans Alley’s brochures, opened it to the section marked “CPAs,” and hunted for the accountant’s name.

  The call to James Morrison didn’t go well. He outlined Artisans Alley’s long list of creditors, and advised her to take a good look at the books. Unless the Alley turned around in the next few months, it would go under—taking Chad’s investment with it—and probably all of Victoria Square as well. The chances of a buyer taking on that kind of debt were nil.

  Katie thumbed through more of Ezra’s files, finding three loan payment books. It didn’t take a financial genius to see that Ezra was behind on two of them.

  “Oh, boy,” she breathed, wishing she’d taken more of an interest in the place since Chad’s death.

  A coffee-stained ledger proved to be a record of rent checks collected. Listed by booth number, each vendor’s name had been carefully printed in what had to be Ezra’s own hand. Quite a few of them were in arrears: Donner, Frances, Hingle, Mitchell, and more.

  Good grief! Two or three of them were almost a year behind in their payments. How could Ezra have let the situation deteriorate like that? Why hadn’t he hounded the vendors to pay up or make them leave Artisans Alley?