Murder for Millions (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 7) (11 page)

CHAPTER
25

“Mr. Hertel?” I asked after opening
the door. “What’s going on?”

He glanced anxiously at the parking
lot below. “Can I come in? I don’t think anyone followed me, but you can’t be
too sure.”

I stepped aside and waited until he
was over the threshold. Then I closed and locked the door.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to barge in unannounced,”
Boris said. “But I’ve been waiting for a chance to slip away and tell you at
least what I know so far.”

I walked into the living room and
he followed. I asked if he wanted something to drink, but he declined the
offer.

“I can’t stay long,” he said. “My
son thinks I’m at Drake’s Deli buying a sandwich.”

I sat on the sofa as Boris settled
into a chair. I waited for him to reveal more about the mysterious visit, but
he seemed lost in thought. When I said his name a few seconds later, he jerked
in surprise.

“Oh, heavens! I’m sorry, Katie. I’m
just…” He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “This whole thing is really
doing a number on me. I slipped up and…well, I guess you know what I’m going to
say next. I fell off the wagon again. But it’s not as bad as it was after Edith
died. I’m just trying to calm my nerves enough to get through this thing.”

“What thing?” I asked. “What has
you so rattled?”

He heaved a sigh and sat forward,
elbows on his knees and forehead in his hands. I watched his shoulders rise and
fall as he muttered to himself.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, sitting
up again. “I think someone’s going to kill my son. And Kevin agrees. That’s why
we’ve been spending time with Carter Devane and that private investigator
woman.”

“Velma Lancaster?”

He smirked. “Yeah, she’s a piece of
work. Looks like a million bucks on the outside, but she’s rotten to the core.”

“Let’s back up,” I suggested.
“Before we dice and slice Velma’s personality, tell me why you think someone
wants to kill your son.”

Boris lifted his chin. “Because he
knows the truth.”

“About what?”

“Carter Devane’s company,” he said.
“Someone is saying the whole place is built on a lie, Katie. They seem to think
they can blackmail Devane by falsely claiming that he came up with the idea for
those breath chews for dogs. And the fact of the matter is, it wasn’t just him.
And he’s never pretended that he invented the things all by himself. If you
read the company literature, the references are kept vague due to a private
agreement about development of the prototype and formula for Minty Dog Chews.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that. But what’s
the truth? Who cooked up the idea?”

“Jacob Lowry got the ball rolling,”
Boris said. “He had the idea first, the basic concept, the formula and the
unique shape for the chews. Jacob thought it all up. When they were in college,
the three of them—Jacob, Carter Devane and my son—shared an apartment with a
fourth guy. And Toby Reiter had a dog who had really stinky breath and—”

“Pardon me for interrupting,” I
said quickly.

Boris blinked and smiled. “What’s
that?”

“Did you or Kevin tell the police
any of this?” It seemed like I’d been posing the same question far too often
lately. “That seems like the logical thing to do in a case like this.”

He shook his head. “Not yet, but we
will. I wanted to get all of the ducks in a row first.”

“But if your son’s life has been
threatened, you really should—”

“That’s just it,” Boris said.
“Nobody’s directly threatened Kevin. It’s all been implied in the anonymous
poem. At least, until Carter’s house was burglarized, the body shop was burned
and Jacob Lowry was killed. Now, it’s gone to the next level.”

“What about the fourth guy you
mentioned? Any chance he’s responsible?”

He squinted. “Which fourth guy?”

“The one with the dog,” I said. “From
your son’s days at college?”

The squint was replaced with a
watery smile. “Oh, Toby? Yeah, he was a good kid, always polite and respectful
of parents and teachers.”

“
Was
a good kid?”

Boris sighed gently. “Yeah, Toby drowned
when his boat capsized off the Oregon coast a few years after the boys finished
school.”

“Oh, I’m…” I paused while his phone
rang and he fumbled with it briefly. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” I
continued. “When you mentioned that his dog was the inspiration for Carter
Devane’s company, I thought maybe…”

The rest of the idea wasn’t worth
going into. If Toby Reiter had passed away, he couldn’t be playing a role in
the anonymous threats against the four people on the rhyming hit list.

I was thinking about Toby, his dog
and the other three men during their college days when Boris cleared his throat
loudly to get my attention.

“I need to confess something,” he
said.

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure where he was
going, but I could tell from the look on his face that he was determined.
“What’s that?”

“It’s something that…” He
hesitated, covering his mouth while he coughed. “I want to apologize in advance
for what I’m about to tell you, Katie. The idea made sense when we thought of
it, but now…”

After a few minutes of taut
silence, I said, “But now you’re not so sure?”

“Exactly,” Boris said with a weary
tone.

“Is this about the other day?” I
asked. “When you came into Sky High right after we opened?”

He nodded. “My son brought me over that
morning. I’d had a bit to drink and he didn’t want me driving. We’d been up all
night with Carter, Velma and Jacob, trying to figure out how to identify the
person behind the threats.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

He grunted softly. “We wanted to do
it on our own. Well, to be honest,
Carter
wanted us to do it without
going to the authorities. He figured it was someone that knew the truth about
things, maybe someone from the past. And we thought that if you were aware of
the situation then maybe you’d start looking into the matter and help identify
the guilty party.”

“That doesn’t explain why Mr. Devane
called the Aspen police after the burglary.”

He nodded. “At that moment, nobody
knew it was anything bigger than a simple break-in. Carter didn’t find the blackmail
letter until
after
he’d told the police that his home had been
burglarized.”

“But why did you bring a copy of it
to me in such strange way?” I asked. “Why didn’t you simply tell me what was
going on?”

He thought about the questions
briefly, pressing his hands against the chair as if it would somehow steady his
deliberation.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Getting
you involved was my doing, Kate. I remembered hearing your parents talk about
how well you did as a detective in Chicago. I thought maybe you could help. I
proposed the idea to my son. He resisted at first, but eventually agreed that
we would slip a copy of the letter to you with that silly drunk old fool act. I
know it seems ridiculous now, but we were nervous to approach you directly
since we didn’t know who we could trust.” He paused, taking a deep breath.
“Actually, we
still
don’t know who to trust because the responsible
party has yet to be identified.”

“Were the others aware that you
were giving me a copy of the rhyming list?”

He shook his head. “Carter and
Velma didn’t know that I came to see you that morning. My son told them later. They
were pretty livid about it, but eventually Kevin convinced them that you might
be able to do something that we hadn’t yet.”

“Such as?”

“Find out who was behind the
anonymous threats,” Boris answered. “Because you know so many people in town.
And because of your background and the work you did in Chicago. Your dad was
always really proud of how you helped people. And I know that you’ve worked
with the local police on a couple of things since you moved back, so…” He
lifted his hands and held them out. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen
to Kevin. That boy’s all the family that I’ve got left.”

We sat quietly for a few minutes.
Boris stared into space, biting the nail of his left thumb and taking one deep
breath after another. I contemplated everything that he’d just shared with me. Then
I asked if he would consider bringing his son in the next day so we could all
talk about the situation.

“What more is there to say?” asked
Boris.

“It might be helpful if I hear some
of this directly from your son. Then I can do some checking around town and
share the relevant points with Trent Walsh and the rest of his team at the
CCPD.”

Boris nodded silently as he thought
about things. Then he agreed to the idea and promised to come by Sky High the
following day.

“What time is good for you?” he
asked.

I smiled. “Let’s aim for eleven,” I
suggested. “There’s generally a lull in the action between breakfast and lunch,
so that should give us a half hour or so.”

He stood and offered his hand.
“Thank you, Katie,” he said as we shook. “We’ll be grateful for whatever
assistance and advice you might be able to share with us.”

CHAPTER
26

Harper was frowning and muttering
to herself when she swept through the swinging door from the dining room into
the Sky High kitchen the next morning at eleven. I’d just started a new batch
of pie dough in the mixer and Julia was carefully arranging crisp strips of
bacon on a piece of toasted wheat bread for one of our most persnickety BLT
aficionados.

“This is like getting the blocks
set up for Jenga,” she murmured. “One wrong move and the whole thing could come
tumbling down.”

Harper moaned. “Please make sure
that’s extra, extra,
extra
crispy. Mrs. Chadwick’s in rare form today.”

“It’s basically charred shoe
leather at this point,” Julia said, keeping her eyes on the brittle brown
strips. “Doesn’t that sound just positively
yummy
?”

I laughed. “To each their own, Jules!
Knowing what you like is the first step toward happiness!”

“You are so right,” Harper said.
“And speaking of knowing what they want, your fans are starting to stack up in
the dining room, Katie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Three men want to see you.” She
dropped a hand on each hip. “One’s with the local PD and the other two are a
father-and-son duo looking none too happy.”

I switched off the mixer, wiped my
hands on a towel and followed Harper into the dining room. Tyler Armstrong was
perched on a stool at the end of the counter. Boris and Kevin Hertel stood just
inside the front door, looking awkward and jumpy. I gave them a wave and headed
for the far side of the room.

“Detective Armstrong,” I said. “Can
I get you a cup of coffee?”

He shook his head. “Harper’s got my
order, Katie. But thank you anyway.”

“What’s going on?”

He reached into his jacket, came
out with a folded sheet of paper and held it toward me.

“Thanks,” I said. “What’s this?”

“It’s transcripts of the 911 calls
from the night Pemberton’s body shop burned,” he explained. “I was headed this
way and Deputy Chief Walsh asked me to drop them off for you.”

I nodded and glanced at the record
of the second call. As my eyes scanned the lines of text, one phrase in
particular jumped off the page.

“Sweet sassy molassy!” I gushed.
“Is this really the anonymous call from that night?”

Tyler Armstrong nodded. “Yeah, but
what’s wrong? Is there an F-bomb in there somewhere?”

“No, nothing like that. Just a
fairly distinctive expression that I heard recently.”

He smiled. “That’s a relief. I was
pretty sure the Pemberton calls didn’t have any cursing, so I was afraid that
Deputy Chief Walsh had given me the wrong transcripts.”

I chuckled at the possibility that Trent
would make such an unforced error. Then I thanked Tyler again for coming by.

“No problem,” he said. “Running
this errand for Trent means I can get a caffé mocha and slice of Black Forest
cake to go.”

I glanced over his shoulder and
noticed that Kevin Hertel was drifting toward the front door. Before he had a
chance to slip away, I shook Tyler’s hand and scrambled across the dining room.

“Thanks for your patience,” I said
to Boris and his son. “And thank you so much for coming to see me.”

“Is this a convenient time?” the
father asked.

“Yes, it’s perfect. Julia and
Harper should be able to handle things for a few minutes alone.”

Kevin glowered at me. “I’ve got an
appointment in an hour across town,” he said. “Can we do this?”

I nodded my head toward the hallway.
“The office is this way,” I said. “Would you like anything to drink before we begin?”

They both quickly declined, so I
made my way down the corridor to the office.

“Please make yourself comfortable,”
I said, pointing toward the empty guest chairs. “If you change your mind about
something to drink, just let me know, okay?”

Boris smiled. His son slumped in a
chair, picking furiously at the ripped knee of his jeans. When they were both
seated, I closed the door and slipped behind my desk.

“Kevin?”

He nodded.

“After talking to your dad last
night,” I began, “I thought it might be helpful to get your input on things.”

He smirked. “Such as?”

“Well, most importantly, I was curious
about the origins of Minty Dog Chews. Your father said that you, Jay Lowry and
Carter Devane were sharing a house in Berkeley when the idea was first
discussed for a dog chew breath freshener.”

“That’s all true,” Kevin said in a
flat tone. “What else?”

“Well, if that’s the case, why
didn’t Carter included you and Jay when he started the company?”

Kevin snorted a laugh. “Who said
that he didn’t?”

The retort was delivered so
casually that I wasn’t sure I’d heard it correctly. When I asked him to repeat
the statement, he fulfilled the request with another coarse chuckle.

“That’s the thing about
discretion,” he said. “Sometimes it actually works and people respect your
privacy.”

“I don’t understand that last bit,”
I said.

Boris sighed. “See? The boy talks
in riddles!”

“Ah, c’mon, dad!” Kevin groaned. “You’re
just mad that I’ve never told you about our deal with Carter. But Jacob and I
signed a legal contract; in exchange for lifetime profit participation in Minty
Dog Chews, we promised to never tell anyone about the agreement. Carter’s got
this weird obsession to protect the mystique that he came up with the concept
by himself. All of the media coverage over the years made it seem like Minty
Dog was a stroke of genius that he cooked up on his own. I didn’t tell you back
then, pops, because I’d signed the papers.”

“Well, that’s understandable,”
Boris said. “But you can certainly tell us about it now.”

Kevin grumbled, pushed up from the
chair and started pacing. One hand brushed through his hair as he walked, while
the other arced through the air.

“This whole thing was a fluke,” he
said, shuffling away from where his father and I sat. “It was a bunch of guys
and a dog, sharing a house during college. The dog had the worst breath you can
imagine. We started joking around about a canine version of Altoids and—”

“Of
what
?” Boris
interrupted.

“Altoids,” Kevin repeated. “The really
strong breath mints in the red tin box?”

His father shrugged. “I gargle with
Listerine if I need to,” Boris said, chuckling softly. “Or, maybe I should say,
when
I need to.”

Kevin swiveled near the door and
began a return trip toward the desk. “Anyway, Jacob’s a genius with…” His feet
stopped and his voice dwindled away. He held the position, staring down at the
floor while his hand continued running through his short brown hair. “I guess I
should say that he
was
a genius with stuff like science and chemistry.
He was born to be a problem solver, too. Carter and I made fun of the dog, but
Jacob saw it as a challenge. He started working in the lab at Berkeley, after
class and on weekends, trying to come up with a breath mint for dogs. Carter
and I joined in eventually and the three of us came up with a formula that was
effective and easy to make. We knew we had a good thing when Bruiser kept
begging for more.”

“Is that the dog?” Boris asked.

Kevin nodded. “We used to go and
drink beers and talk about how we’d start this huge company selling a bunch of pet
products based on things that people use.”

“What else besides the breath mint
idea?” I said.

He stopped, shrugged and then
pivoted back toward the opposite end of the room. “The usual stuff people keep
in their medicine cabinets—shampoo, nail polish, underarm deodorant.”

Boris grunted. “Deodorant for dogs?
No wonder you dropped out. All that time your mother and I thought you were
going to class.”

Kevin’s pacing slowed before he
finally stopped. He turned slowly, fixed his gaze on his father and pulled a
sleek black wallet from his back pocket.

“How much cash do you have on you?”
he said.

Boris didn’t answer, but the simmering
tension in the room was suddenly thick and dense.

“Can we stay on the origins of the
dog breath mints?” I asked.

Kevin headed toward his father and
pinched a fat stack of bills from the wallet. “I’ve got two grand,” he said
coldly. “How about you, old man?”

Boris smiled. “Is that funny money
or the real McCoy?”

“Here’s the deal,” Kevin said,
returning to the chair beside his father. “Carter found Jacob’s original formula
for Minty Dog Chews when he was going through a trunk of old college papers at
his mom and dad’s house when they moved.”

“Is that when he resurrected the
idea?” I asked.

Kevin smiled. “Resurrected is a
good way to put it. None of us even remembered the notebook with all of the
scribbled notes and Polaroids of Bruiser.”

“And this was before or after
Carter’s first success?” I said.

“I think it was actually during the
time he was still running the travel site he started a few years after
graduation,” Kevin answered. “He originally did a stint with Google and spent
another year with a social media startup that crashed and burned. But then he
had the idea for the airfare comparison website that he sold for a gazillion
bucks.”

I checked the notes on my desk.
“Wasn’t it forty-four million?”

“Forty-four?” Kevin joked. “Forty-five?
What’s it matter when you’re talking about that much cash?”

Boris sat up and straightened his
shoulders. “He sold that airline ticket thingy for forty-four million?”

“Give or take,” Kevin said. “My
point is, Carter never tried to steal the Minty Dog idea. He called us and
offered either a spot at the company or a slice of the profits. I was working
in New York by then; Jacob and his wife had joined her father at the family
vineyard in Napa. Neither one of us wanted to sit behind a desk and push paper
around, so we opted for a partnership stake. I didn’t take a job with Minty Dog
until a while later.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of
this?” asked Boris. “Were you afraid I’d ask for a loan?”

Kevin scowled. “Seriously, dad?”

“Well, w-w-what?” Boris stammered.
“Why did you keep that a secret from your mother and me? She would’ve been so proud
to know her son did good before she passed.”

“Yeah. No doubt. But it wasn’t
calculated. I didn’t try to keep it from you. I couldn’t talk about it because
of the legal agreement. Besides, we weren’t talking much anyway. I hadn’t been
home to Crescent Creek for over ten years. It just seemed like it would be
totally awkward to call you up and say, ‘Guess what, dad? Remember Carter and
Jacob? Well, we’re all going to get a boatload of money for an idea we cooked
up way back in college.’ It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Because I know how
hard you and mom worked for everything. I didn’t want you to feel…I don’t know,
to feel bad that your ne’er-do-well son had accidentally stumbled into a
fortune.”

I waited for a moment or two. They
needed to talk privately, but I still had questions for Kevin.

“Do you mind if I ask you about a
few more things?” I said finally.

Kevin jutted out his chin. “What’s
that?”

“Since you’re telling us that you
and Jacob profited from the sale of Minty Dog Chews, do you know who might’ve
been trying to fleece Carter?”

He exhaled and leaned against the
back of the chair. “I couldn’t tell you. I’ve wracked my brain since I heard
about the note that Carter found after the burglary, but nothing’s coming up. I
mean, only a handful of people ever heard about the idea when we were in
school, so…I don’t know.”

“Who else?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Who else knew about Minty Dog?”

He laughed. “Well, the whole flipping
world is going to know the truth now.”

“I mean back in college?” I said.

He thought for a few seconds,
fingers drumming on one thigh as he tried to recall the long ago past. When he
finally came up with a list of names, one in particular seemed intriguing.

“Velma knew?” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah. She and Carter
were…” He glanced at his dad. “It was a casual thing. They met when he and I
were in school, but nothing happened. Then, years later, they dated for a few weeks
when she and her husband separated briefly. But they obviously stayed in touch
after Velma went back home because Carter hired her and her husband to do
background checks and things like that before he sold the company.”

“Okay, so…Velma was aware that
Carter didn’t develop the Minty Dog concept on his own,” I said, recording the facts
with a few quick additions to my notepad. “She knew that the company’s official
history had been fudged.”

He nodded.

“Anyone else?”

“Those are all the people I can
remember,” Kevin answered. “Maybe Velma told her husband. You’d have to ask her
about that though.”

“That’s fine.” I pushed the notepad
back on my desk. “I’m just trying to get a snapshot of the Minty Dog history.
It seems pretty straightforward that whoever is behind the burglary and Jacob
Lowry’s death had firsthand knowledge about your college days.”

Kevin smiled. “Do you know how many
women Carter dated back then?”

I smiled. “More than a few?”

He laughed. “More than a few every
week. The guy’s handsome. Women dig that. And he had an easy charm that made
him seem irresistible.”

“To women like Velma?”

“Yeah,” he said with another laugh.
“Although she’d tell you that there’s no one else like
her
, so Carter
was a fool to dump her.”

“But then he hired her to work as a
PI for his company?”

Kevin sighed again. “Love is blind,
Kate. Carter and Velma are perfect for one another. They’re ambitious. They’re
incredibly disciplined. And they know how to color outside the lines to get
what they want.”