A Convenient Death (An Eden Mystery): Eden Mysteries, #3

By Laurel Heidtman

Two murders, too many suspects!

When Tracy Andrews, night clerk at the Eden Quick-Mart, is murdered along with an elderly customer, there's no shortage of suspects. Tracy liked men more than a married woman should, and her estranged husband, a Raven University police officer, knew it. Did he lose it and kill Tracy and her customer, did Tracy put too many demands on a boyfriend, or did a spouse of a married lover decide she'd had enough? Or was it a simple robbery gone wrong?
 
No one looks at the elderly man killed with her, but when someone breaks into his home, Eden police detective Jo Valentine takes a closer look. What she doesn't find surprises her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurel Heidtman
• Release date: Dec 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9798215917312

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Joe Bob Daniels flipped down the visor and checked himself in the mirror attached to the back while he waited for the light to change. At quarter till five in the morning, he could have run the light, but he wanted to check his appearance before pulling into the brightly lit lot where Tracy might see him. It was okay for girls to look at themselves in the mirror before getting out of a car, but it wasn't a manly thing for a guy to do.

He smoothed down his cowlick, wiped some gunk out of the corner of his left eye, and flipped the visor back up. The light turned green. A half block ahead, he saw two cycles pull out of the Quick-Mart's lot and accelerate rapidly in his direction. As they passed him, he saw the riders wore helmets and were bundled in denim and leather, but Joe Bob still shivered when he looked at them. Winter hadn't let go yet, and it was downright cold this morning. He wondered if Tracy thought the guys were manly or just plain stupid. Maybe he'd comment on them and see how she reacted.

The only car besides Tracy’s in the lot was a maroon Crown Vic—a ten-year old model, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was parked in the corner of the lot, just out of the light. As Joe Bob pulled in and parked in one of the empty spots in front of the door, he hoped the owner of the car would buy whatever he’d come for and leave quickly. He wanted a chance to spend some time with Tracy before he had to leave for his shift at the mill.

He’d been trying to work up enough nerve to ask Tracy out, and he thought today just might be the day. She'd been separated from her husband for a while now, so he didn't think it would be too tacky to ask her out. With tough guys who rode cycles on cold March mornings hanging around, he didn't want to wait too long and have somebody else beat him to it.

She'd flirted with him since the first day he'd stopped in the store after she took over the night shift, but it had been an impersonal kind of flirt, the sort of thing a waitress might do with a customer to get a good tip. But in the past three weeks, ever since she'd learned he was the one who had found the body of the murdered girl in Daniel Boone National Forest—while training to walk the Sheltowee Trace no less—she'd lit up every time he walked in. She made him feel like he was interesting, not boring like Kim had said before she told him she wanted a divorce. He didn't like talking about the body and changed the subject as soon as he could, but that just seemed to pique Tracy’s interest even more.

As he stepped through one side of the double glass door, the alert system attached to the door announced his arrival with a cheerful little ding. Joe Bob looked toward the counter, a big grin already in place for Tracy, but she wasn't there.

Morning, Tracy, he called out and waited, expecting to hear her breathy voice telling him good morning back. She had the sexiest voice he'd ever heard, kind of like the way Marilyn Monroe's sounded when she sang happy birthday to JFK. But there was only silence.

Trace? he called out again, the grin fading when there was no reply.

Occasionally Tracy was in the back stocking the floor to ceiling cooler that held the milk, beer, and pop, but she always stepped out within seconds of hearing the door chime. Can't leave the place unwatched for a minute, she'd told him once, people will steal you blind. Maybe she hadn't heard the chime, he thought, or maybe she was indisposed in the bathroom. But where was the customer? That Crown Vic hadn't driven to the store on its own.

He walked to the back of the store, glancing down each aisle as he did so, but saw no one. The customer had parked out of the lights. Was that because the driver was up to something and didn't want his car identified?

Suddenly he remembered the cycles leaving the lot in a big hurry.

Tracy! He bellowed her name now, no longer worried about looking cool.

Only silence answered his shout. Something was very, very wrong.

He hesitated for only a second before striding to the break halfway down the counter and pushing through the gate displaying the sign that read Employees Only. Two packs of cigarettes lay on the floor below the cancer stick rack, and it was only then he noticed that the rack itself was nearly empty. His eyes lifted to the register and widened when he saw the drawer standing open and empty.

Tracy!

He was nearly screaming now, his voice filled with fear, but he hardly noticed. The guys on the cycles, his mind chattered at him, the guys on the cycles. He turned to the swinging doors leading into the part of the store that was reserved for employees only. No Admittance, the sign said, and for a second, he thought about obeying it. He could just step back outside and use his cell phone to call 9-1-1. It would be the smart thing to do. Besides, you weren't supposed to contaminate a crime scene, right? He could call it in and wait for the police in his truck.

But Tracy had to be somewhere in the store, maybe tied up and gagged, unable to call out for help. He couldn't just leave her like that. He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and stood tall. He'd help her—rescue her—and then he'd call the police. He pushed open the swinging doors and took two steps inside the back room before his brain registered what his eyes were seeing and his nose was smelling.

As he stumbled backwards, his back striking the register drawer, he heard a whimpering sound. It took a few seconds before he realized he was making the noise. He backtracked through the gate and to the front door, knocking over a rack of chips and pretzels in his flight, and made it to the front of his truck before the coffee and toast he'd consumed before leaving the house came up. His arms outstretched, his hands resting on the grill of the truck, tears flowing from his eyes, he tried to spit the taste from his mouth and the image of what he'd seen from his mind.

Maybe he wasn't looking very manly, but Tracy was beyond noticing.

CHAPTER 2

Jo Valentine swung her car into the lot of the Quickie, as the Eden Quick-Mart was known by townies and students alike, and parked near the corner of the building, out of the way of the three marked units lined up along the front next to a black pickup. An old Crown Vic sat several spaces down from the pickup, and a dirty white Subaru Outback sat at the front of the lot along the street. Jo guessed one of them belonged to the clerk.

The cruiser farthest from the door still had its overheads flashing, the strobe effect washing the wall of the building with alternating red and blue. Russ Handel, the shift sergeant, was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the door with Vernon Taylor, who’d been on the department less than a year. The cruiser with its lights brightening up the night was an older model, so Jo knew it was the rookie's. Either forgot to turn the lights off or left them on so he could feel like he was the star of his favorite cop show.

Lonnie Smallwood was standing by his cruiser talking to a man seated in the passenger seat, feet on the pavement, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He seemed familiar, but Jo couldn't see his face. She guessed the man had been the one to call them, and the pickup belonged to him. As she approached Handel and Taylor, a car turned into the lot behind her. A quick glance told her she'd be working this one with Sticks.

Morning, Defective. Handel winked at Taylor who had the good sense to show no expression.

Don't give up the day job, Russ. The comedy routine needs a little work. She acknowledged Taylor with a nod. What have we got?

Two dead. Shot.

Handel adjusted his gun belt. Trying to get the weight off L-3, Jo guessed. Russ had been suffering with back problems for the last couple of years.

Register's empty, cigarette rack's just about empty, looks like a few six packs might be missing from the cooler. The bodies are in the room behind the register. One's the clerk, the other looks like a customer.

He call it in? Jo jerked her head toward the guy with Smallwood.

Russ nodded.

Joe Bob Daniels. He's working day shift at the mill and stopped on his way in.

Daniels? Sticks had walked up and caught the last. That's a bit of a coincidence.

That it is, Jo thought. No wonder the guy looked familiar.

Bad luck is what I'd call it. Poor guy's pretty shook up. Not too many people are unlucky enough to stumble across three murder victims in less than a year. Russ chuckled, but there wasn't much humor in the sound. If we didn't know who killed the girl last fall, guess he'd be our prime suspect.

Yeah. Jo stared at the man in the cruiser. He sat slumped forward, head bent, as if he would have curled into a fetal position had it not been for the policemen standing around. Little early to be going in for day shift, isn't it?

I think he got up early for Tracy, Russ said.

Tracy?

Tracy Andrews. The clerk. Been working night shift for two, three months now. Pretty thing—used to be anyway. Don't look so good now. He shifted his gun belt again. Married to a Raven officer, but I hear they're separated. No big surprise there. From what I hear, Tracy liked men a lot more than a married woman should.

Round heels, huh? Sticks said.

So they say. 'Course I'm not one to gossip.

He grinned. They all knew cops were bigger gossips, at least among themselves, than any old lady could ever hope to be. One of the hazards of the profession was thinking the worst about everyone and passing it on when it proved to be true or even if it was just thought to be true.

I answered more than a few domestics at their place before they split, most times an hour or so after the bars closed. Tracy usually looked like she'd just staggered in.

What about the other vic?

Don't recognize him. Old guy. Didn't check for ID, but the Crown Vic comes back to a Kenneth and Sarah Griswold. It's pretty obvious he's dead, so I figured it was best not to touch the body.

Jo nodded her approval and turned to the store. As she stared at the glass that was almost totally covered with product banners and sale notices, she realized for the first time that it had been a miracle the Quickie hadn't been the scene of trouble before now. An armed robber could stand at the counter, weapon in hand, and it would be almost impossible for any passerby to see him. The Quickie had avoided trouble for a long time, but when it came, it came big. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of her jacket, slipped them on and opened the door.

The cheerful ding of the door alert was incongruous with the silence of the store, or maybe it just seemed that way because Jo knew the reason for the silence. As she and Sticks stepped through the gate leading to the space behind the counter, Jo noted the cigarette packs on the floor. A twenty-dollar bill lay in the shadows of the toe kick of the cabinet below the register. Nerves—grabbing what they could carry and dropping some in their haste. But then, killing two people could make anyone nervous.

She pushed through the swinging doors leading to the employees only area, Sticks on her heels. The square room was no more than 20' by 20' and filled with the smell of death—a potpourri of excrement, urine, and blood liberally accented with a dose of fear. Two chairs with scuffed wooden frames and cracked vinyl upholstery sat against the left wall—the inside of the front wall of the building—an equally scuffed end table between them. A desk, its top barely visible under piles of paper, sat against the far wall, a file cabinet to one side. To the right a hall led to what appeared to be a larger room at the rear of the store. Probably a storage room, Jo thought, used to house the stock delivered at the back of the store. The area bordered by the office, the hall, the back room, and the outer wall of the store was partitioned off, a door opening into it slightly over halfway down the right wall of the office. Probably the employee restroom, Jo thought. The bodies were straight ahead less than six feet from the swinging doors. Jo stepped to the left and circled to the other side of the bodies.

The woman—Tracy Andrews, the clerk, Russ had said—was slumped against the right wall between the hall and the bathroom door in a sitting position, leaning slightly to the left. Her head had dropped forward exposing a glimpse of the large exit wound on the back of her head, her hair matted with blood and brain matter. She'd left a trail of the same down the wall as she'd slid from a standing position to the floor. Jo couldn't see any other wounds on her, but that one to the head had been more than enough.

The man lay across her shins, his back to her as if he'd been trying to shield her. Jo guessed he was in his sixties, maybe even early seventies, but he was a good-looking senior citizen—tall, trim, a full head of silver hair. Or at least he had been a good-looking senior citizen. The blood staining his blue button-down and smeared over his features thanks to the two wounds—one in his chest, the other in his forehead—didn't do much for his looks.

The man was lying on his right side, angled a little face-up so his right rear pants pocket couldn't be reached without rolling the body. Jo squatted beside the man's body and probed his left rear pocket for his wallet. She hit it lucky and withdrew a worn brown leather billfold. The Kentucky driver's license identified the man as Kenneth Ray Griswold, born in 1953. According to the address on his license, he lived in Eden in a neighborhood of bungalows mixed in with duplexes and the odd 4-unit apartment building.

The wallet also contained slightly over two hundred dollars in cash, a VISA card, a Lowe's card, an Eden Public Library card, and in a concealed compartment, a faded picture of a younger Kenneth Griswold with a smiling blonde. Both looked to be in their forties when the picture was taken. A wife, Jo wondered? No pictures of younger people or children, so maybe no kids or grandkids. A good thing for her since the notification would be easier, but maybe not so good for a wife who might now find herself alone.

Hey, Jo? You in here?

Jo recognized Lena Jackson's voice. Lena was an investigator from the Kentucky State Police Eastern branch lab, assigned to collect forensics evidence for important cases—and that definitely included murder—for departments in the eastern part of the state who didn't have their own forensics people. That description fit the Eden Police Department.

Jo pushed back through the swinging doors, the wallet still in her hand. Sticks continued on down the hall to the storage room in the back.

Haven't seen you in a while.

Considering what we do for a living, Lena, I'd say that's a good thing.

Lena laughed. She was a short pudgy woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetually cheerful expression on her face. Jo wondered how she managed that considering her job. She knew from looking in the mirror that she seldom had a cheerful expression on her own face, though maybe that had more to do with her personal life than her job. Or maybe she was just a cranky bitch by nature.

Yeah, guess you're right, Lena said. Bob'll be here in a few. Vics back there?

She nodded toward the swinging doors, and Jo nodded in confirmation.

I'll get started then.

Lena headed through the gate, collection case in hand. Just as she stepped through the swinging doors, Sticks reentered the store through a door to the left of the cooler in the back. Even from where she was standing, Jo could see an empty spot on the shelves where beer was stacked.

Nothing looks disturbed back there, Sticks said, although someone from the store will have to confirm that. As far as I can tell, they took the beer out through the cooler doors.

And hopefully left some prints. Jo handed the wallet to Sticks. Recognize the name?

Nope, he said, but then, if I haven't arrested the guy or wrote him a ticket back in the day, I probably wouldn't.

You need to get out more.

You're one to talk. You know him?

No.

Old guys don't break the law as much as the young ones, Sticks said, although I gotta say, it's odd for an old dude to be out at this time of the morning.

That's what I was thinking, Jo said. It's not likely he was heading to work.

Sticks looked at the picture of the couple. Think the woman's his wife?

Guess we'll find out. She nodded toward the security cameras, one mounted above and to one side of the door, the other above the door leading to the back room.

Let's hope those aren't dummies.

Jo knew a lot of small businesses didn't want to spend the money to have actual working security cameras. Instead they mounted cameras with no working parts, hoping that the presence of them would be enough to deter shoplifters and armed robbers.

Video of the animals who did this? That would make our job too easy.

Did you see the clerk's purse in the back room? I didn't see one in the office.

Didn't see one back there. Might be under the register.

Sticks went behind the counter, opened the cabinet under the register, and held up a worn brown leather shoulder bag. Rather than disturb any trace evidence that might be on the counter, he carried it out to Jo and held it while she unzipped it and pulled out a red clutch wallet. The driver's license confirmed that the dead woman was Tracy Andrews, born 1986. The photo on the driver's license showed a pretty woman with dark brown hair, the curls reaching her shoulders. Even in the license photo, Jo could see the bedroom eyes and the come-hither smile. She felt an immediate dislike for the woman in the photo, the instinctive reaction of one female to another who couldn't be trusted with men, and chastised herself for it. Tracy Andrews might have been trouble when she was alive, but now she was a thirty-two-year-old woman who had died violently on the dirty floor of a convenience store.

Russ said she was separated from a Raven cop. Do you know any named Andrews?

Can't say that I do. Maybe he's a new guy or maybe she's going by her maiden name.

Russ said he'd answered calls at their place. I'll get the name from him, you get a preliminary statement from Daniels. We'll need him to come down later to sign a formal one.

Sticks had just finished talking to Daniels, and Jo had the information on the husband, Kevin Walton, when a silver Lexus pulled into the lot. A short brown-skinned man with a face as wrinkled as a prune jumped from the driver's seat with the agility of a twenty-year old. He hurried over to Russ, his eyes wide.

I am Kamal Mattu. This is my store.

The man spoke with only a slight accent.

Your department called me. What has happened? Have we been robbed?

Russ glanced at her. Mr. Mattu saw this and turned to her.

Is Miss Andrews okay?

She took a deep breath and motioned to the Lexus.

Let's go to your car, she said, so we can talk.

CHAPTER 3

D o you mind if we get out of the cold? Jo asked Kamal Mattu as they reached his Lexus.

The Quick-Mart owner nodded rapidly and opened the front passenger door for Jo and the rear one for Sticks. The expression on his face was one of resignation. He knew they wanted to talk to him about more than a robbery, and he knew it wasn't good news. He waited until they had seated themselves, then closed their doors, walked around the car, and got in the driver's side. He closed his door, turned to Jo, and waited silently.

This wasn't just a robbery, Mr. Mattu. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your clerk, Tracy Andrews, was killed.

The little man closed his eyes for few seconds, then sighed and shook his head.

I come to the United States from India many years ago, he said. First to Chicago, Illinois. My cousin had a store there, and we opened two more together. I lost count of the robberies, and five of our clerks were shot—two died—in the first six years we were in business. I sold my part of the stores to my cousin and came to Eden where things were more peaceful. And now...

He didn't finish, but he didn't have to. The violence and craziness had followed Kamal Mattu. No place was safe anymore, not even rural college towns. Might as well break the rest of the bad news to him, Jo thought, and took a deep breath.

I'm afraid Ms. Andrews wasn't the only victim tonight, Mr. Mattu. A customer was also killed.

Mattu's eyes opened wide, his shock evident. He hadn't been overly surprised that an employee on the night shift had fallen victim to a crime, but he hadn't expected to hear a customer had as well.

Do you know a Kenneth Griswold? A white man, sixty-five years old. She nodded toward the maroon Crown Vic. That's his car.

Kamal Mattu stared at the car for a few seconds before shaking his head.

No, he said. I don't know the man you say, and I don't recognize the car. I may have seen him in the store, but I don't recognize the name.

Are you present in the store much?

During the day, yes, he said. I have two other stores, one in Mayfield and another here in Eden, near the interstate. I spend time during the day in all of them—ordering stock, doing books, checking on my employees. I sometimes stop in during the evening, but less so at night.

He shrugged.

I have found, he said, that a business owner needs to stay involved with his business. And I have found that it's better if employees don't know when you might make an appearance.

Jo could understand that. She wondered how much stock was lost, especially on night shift, thanks to employees letting their friends walk off with it.

We noticed you have two cameras mounted in the store. Are they working cameras?

The embarrassed expression on Kamal Mattu's wrinkled face made Jo's heart sink, and she knew what his answer was going to be before he said it.

I'm afraid not, he said. It is expensive to have a service like that, and I didn't think...my cousin and I needed it in Chicago, but I didn't think it was necessary here.

It wasn't necessary until it was, Jo thought. She wondered if Mr. Mattu would install a real security system now, or if he wouldn't bother on the assumption that lightning never struck twice in the same place.

Had Tracy Andrews been working for you long?

He shook his head.

No, only about two months. She was quite responsible, though—a good employee. I checked on her several times during the first month, but I saw no problems.

What were her hours?

She came in at eleven and left at seven. We have two people on evening shift with staggered hours, and one works until midnight. We also have two on day shift, and one of them comes in at six.

So between midnight and six, Ms. Andrews worked alone?

He nodded.

Except on Fridays and Saturdays. Her days off are—were—Sunday and Monday. I have a part-time employee who also works night shift on Fridays and Saturdays, so there are two on duty then. Those are often busy times, and people come in after the bars close...

His voice trailed off, and he