A Mother's Day Murder (Mt. Abrams Mysteries Book 1) (2 page)

Small-town living isn’t for everyone. I loved it. There was a real sense of community and safety that I felt comfortable with. I often left my door unlocked, and let Tessa walk to her friends’ houses without any real worry. Caitlyn hated it. Everyone knew everything, she complained. People were always judging, she insisted.

And nothing ever happened.

W
orking
from home had lots of advantages. I never had to worry about what to wear, for example, although some days I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think that maybe, just maybe, I should rethink my usual uniform of yoga pants and T-shirts. But I needed to be comfortable. I was a freelance editor. I used to be a junior editor in a very well-known publishing house, right down the hallway from Marc’s office. It was where we met, fell in love, and worked side by side for years. When Caitlyn was born, I took a few years off before returning a few days a week, then back to full time. Marc and I dropped Cait off at daycare and took the train to Penn Station together. I always took an earlier train home, got Cait, and began my second and third jobs as wife and mom. It worked out quite well for a long time, aside from the part where I was exhausted and grouchy and kept asking Marc when he was going to start to help around the house.

But after Tessa was born, several things happened at once. A larger conglomerate bought out my company, resulting in a huge promotion for Marc and a job elimination for me. Self-publishing started to pick up a little steam, and independent authors needed independent editors to work for them. And finally, Marc leaving forced me to rethink how I was going to support myself. Did I really want to find another NYC job?

So I went online and stalked writers boards and groups, and little by little, I started getting work. Self-pubbed authors had no real money, so I gave all my clients huge breaks on their first few manuscripts. Luckily, I managed to get quite a few good writers wanting my services, and soon they were making enough good money to start paying me good money. That, along with an excellent divorce lawyer, made me feel fairly secure moneywise. When my father died a few years ago, I got an insurance payment that allowed me to buy out Marc’s share of the house and pay off most of the mortgage. I had no car payment anymore; Cait’s education had been paid for by grants and scholarships, and I even had a savings account in case the roof collapsed or the furnace blew up. Living in an old house made for a long list of possible emergency scenarios.

My life was good. I had few complaints. I was even getting a little restless and—dare I say it—bored. The problem was I specialized in mystery novels. Cozies, thrillers, classic whodunits—my mind was never more entertained than when the dead body showed up. And I was good at finding plot holes, making sure the red herrings weren’t too obvious, and tying up all the ends nice and tight. I was an excellent editor, if I do say so myself, because my brain was very good at the little details that made for a first-class mystery. That made my real crime-free life a bit dull. That’s probably why when I got home that morning I went straight to my computer to Google Lacey Mitchell.

Doug and Lacey Mitchell came to Mt. Abrams last year, moving into the old Dwight house after it sat empty for almost six years. There were a string of owners before them, each one doing less and less upkeep until it was a sad, shabby wreck of a place. When we saw the Mitchells putting all sorts of time and money into the house, we were all pretty excited. And when the last of the painters and landscapers drove away, and the Dwight house stood at last, gleaming white in the summer sun, we all waited breathlessly for the first of us to see what the interior looked like.

We were still waiting. We knew nothing more about the family than we did when they first moved in. Hopefully, that was about to change.

There were more Lacey Mitchells than I could have possibly imagined. I narrowed the search to Lacey Mitchells in New Jersey. Nothing. I tried to remember if anyone had found out where they had moved
from
when the family moved to town.

I texted Shelly. She managed a very busy allergist’s office, but I knew she constantly checked her phone. Sure enough, after searching fruitlessly for fifteen more minutes, I got a text back.

I think VA

Good. Lacey Mitchell, Virginia, and bingo—there she was.

Lacey Scott Montgomery, of the Fairfax Montgomerys, married Douglas Wade Mitchell, on December 24
^th
, 2002. Mr. Mitchell hailed from Austin, Texas, where he was employed as an engineer. Ms. Montgomery recently graduated from Sweet Briar with a degree in public relations.

Public relations? Lacey needed to go get her tuition money back. She’d obviously learned nothing about PR.

Then I Googled the Fairfax Montgomerys. Yes, Lacey did have a mother. Millicent Clair Montgomery, nee Wilcox. She also had a father but not anymore. I read the obituary very carefully. Gerald Montgomery had died the previous February. It happened suddenly. He was survived by his daughter Lacey and two grandsons.

Wait. Why wasn’t the wife mentioned? Had they been divorced?

I looked around the Internet. I was on a mission. No mention of divorce or separation, but I wasn’t sure something like that was open information. Last mention of Millicent was the wedding announcement, back in 2002. Nothing at all since, not even in a Lifestyle section where the comings and goings of the Fairfax elite were carefully documented. Millicent had simply vanished. Much like her daughter.

There was another little snippet about Gerald in what looked to be an even more local weekly paper. There, nestled among pie contest results and advertisements for John Deere tractors, was a little article about the generous Mr. Montgomery and how he had used his family money to better the community by donating to various charities, including the library and Habitat for Humanity.

Hmmm
. Family money. According to the
Fairfax Bulletin
his family money was estimated to be in the neighborhood of five million dollars. And without the wife in the picture, could Lacey have inherited the whole bundle? I sat back and stared at the computer screen.

So much for sick in Buffalo.

“
M
om
. Are you working?”

“Of course,” I lied. I’d been in the process of trying to see if ol’ Gerald had probated his will, how much was involved, and most importantly, who got it all. I minimized the screen and stared intently at the incredibly tedious cozy mystery I was supposedly copyediting. “What’s up?”

Caitlyn Elizabeth Symons looked exactly like I would have looked at twenty-four if I had been six inches taller with a discernible waist, shapelier butt, and boobs. And a better nose. And red hair. She had her father’s eyes and my chin, which wasn’t a bad thing. She was a very pretty girl with a smokin’ hot body and a potty mouth that could put a longshoreman to shame. She was also very smart about all sorts of things, but not necessarily common sense things. She made, at one point in her high school career, a small solar rocket that placed third in a national science fair. But for God’s sake, don’t let her near an iron.

She walked into my office, which was a sunroom perched in a corner of the second floor directly over the porch, and sank into a battered but cozy armchair I’d stashed in the corner for when I needed to relax my brain. She was sipping coffee from a very large mug.

“Would you kill for five million dollars?” I asked her.

“Depends. Why, did Grandma strike it rich?”

“No.” I swiveled in my office chair away from my computer to face her. “You’d kill Grandma?”

“Of course not. Who has five million dollars?”

“Lacey Mitchell. Her father died recently and may have left her a bundle.”

“Is there anyone in our family to leave us a bundle?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Oh. So
we’re
going to kill Lacey Mitchell?”

I shook my head again. “Nope.”

She sighed. “Why do you start these conversations?”

“You came up here, remember? I repeat—what’s up?”

“I applied for a fellowship in French comparative literature. They want me to go out for an interview.”

I think my jaw dropped open. I never imagined she’d find anything that was even remotely related to her chosen field of study. But wait—would she get paid for something like that? “Cait, that’s amazing! Oh, I’m so happy for you. When?”

“The first week in June.”

“Where?”

“Catholic University.”

I made a face. “Well you know how I feel about being Catholic, but if they’re willing to take you anyway, that’s just great. Where is that, D.C.?”

“Lyon.”

I stopped being excited. “Lyon as in France?”

She nodded.

“Oh,” I said.

My office has floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, and long gauzy curtains diffuse most of the light, but I swear the world got a little bit darker there for a second. “You’re going to France? They hate us in France. And it’s very expensive there. Finding a place to live is going to be impossible. Don’t you watch
House Hunters International
?”

“First of all, the French do not hate us. And I’ve been saving money like crazy. You know that. I haven’t bought so much as a new pair of shoes in three years. I’ve got lots of money in the bank.”

I took a deep breath. Oh, my dear, sweet little girl. She was a
waitress
. She only worked three nights a week. I mean, really, how much could she have saved? I stood up, stretched, and then gazed out the window. “Exactly how much have you got in that little nest egg of yours?”

“Eighteen thousand dollars.”

I spun around to gape at her. “
What?
”

She looked at me patiently. “Mom, I’ve been working for seven years. Since high school.”

“But part time.”

“Still.”

She waited. I knew what she was thinking.

During her junior year of high school when she should have been traveling around to all the out-of-state colleges she was determined to get into, Marc left. I was a mess. So was she, but for a different reason. She saw the writing on the wall just as clearly as I did. That was the summer she started working at Pierre’s, and that was the summer she told me she could get just as good an education at Rutgers and live at home to save money, keep her part-time job, and help out with Tessa. So she’d commuted through a four-year BA, then a two-year masters program. She was done. I was no longer a quivering mass of depression and anger. Tessa was a serene and oddly mature child. Cait didn’t need to be here anymore.

“Honey, they’ll be lucky to have you. What an amazing opportunity. And you’ll be able to live like a queen. Who knew?”

She flew out of the chair and into my arms, picking me up and hugging me tightly. “Oh, thank you, Mom. I was so afraid you’d freak out.”

There were tears in my eyes. “I am freaking out. I will miss you terribly. But you deserve this.”

She was crying too. “Yeah, I think so. So, which of us tells Tessa?”

Tessa only worshipped her older sister with a devotion formerly found in ancient apostles.

I shook my head. “Not me. This is your dance. You pay the piper.”

She grinned. “Okay. I’ll buy her pizza first.”

I wiped the tears off my face. My little baby. All grown up at last and going off on her own. As much as she was often a huge pain in my butt, I knew I’d have a lot of emotional adjusting to do. “She’ll want your room, you know.”

Cait went back to sit back down, resuming her coffee sipping. “Well, she can’t have it. Not yet. Now, who is this Lacey Mitchell person, and why do you think someone killed her for five million dollars?”

C
ait’s announcement
distracted me from work—and Lacey Mitchell. We went out to lunch, stopped at the bank to take her passport out of the safety deposit box, and had our toes done. All that girlish bonding did little to make me feel any happier about the fact that my child, my firstborn baby, was going across the ocean to live in a strange country where even though she knew the language and loved the culture, she would be a complete outsider, alone, without her mother’s advice and support.

“Mom, you know I rarely take your advice now,” she reminded me, after I expressed my concern.

“I know. But I can give it to you. I can actually see you smile and nod. How can I do that when you’re in France?”

“Skype.”

Damn that kid. She had an answer for everything.

She dropped me off at the bus stop in Upper Main Park, then drove the car up the hill. It was about twenty minutes until Tessa came home from school, so I sat on a bench and quietly took in a truly beautiful spring day. The forsythia was in bloom, as were the daffodils. Birds were singing. A small bunny hopped across Marie Wu’s front yard. I half expected a Disney princess to burst out from somewhere, singing at the top of her lungs and leading a conga line of dancing deer.

“So Ellie. What about Garden Club?”

Lynn Fahey probably worked for the CIA in a former life. She snuck up on me so suddenly I literally jumped.

“God, Lynn, wear a bell around your neck or something, please?”

She sat next to me, crossed her legs, and began bouncing her foot. She was always in motion. Barely over five feet tall, she was one of those aggressively busy women, running to meetings and organizing events. She was vice president of the Garden Club, a member of the Mt. Abrams Historical Society, was on the local PTA fundraising committee, and ran coffee hour at the Methodist Church. She also had two kids in middle school, and her husband always looked happy.

“I’m not joining the Garden Club, Lynn. For one thing, I don’t have a garden.” My house did have a yard, and there were things planted in that yard, but that had been Marc’s doing. Cait weeded and watered things for me. I mowed the small patch of green that, I’m sure, contained a few blades of grass among the weeds. Tessa had a jade plant that I was trying desperately not to kill.

“You don’t need a yard to be in the Garden Club, Ellie. You just need to love plants.”

“I don’t love plants, Lynn. I have a black thumb.” I glanced at my watch. Eight more minutes until the bus.

Lynn tugged on the end of her braid. Her hair was long and light brown, barely streaked with gray. Her braid fell past her waist, adding to her hippie-chic fashion style. Today she was wearing faded jeans, a batik peasant-style blouse, six or seven long beaded necklaces, and Birkenstocks with argyle socks. “Ellie, please. Do you know what Mary Rose is planning? She wants to put pavers in the library park. Can you imagine?”