Authors: Sarah Biglow
After stopping to grab a sandwich and bottled water, Kalina settled in the game room with the inventory boxes spread around her. She heard the back door swing open and she looked up only briefly to see her nephew kick snow off his shoes and unwind the scarf around his face.
“Thanks for doing this, Aunt K.,” he said and settled into a chair beside her.
“Hey, I can use the help.”
Especially when the baby comes
. She caught herself before she could voice that particular concern. Not before she’d shared the news with Chris.
“So anything new and exciting going on?” AJ probed.
“What makes you think there’s anything exciting going on?”
“You sort of have that look.”
Her brow furrowed. “What look?”
“The ‘there’s a case I’m not supposed to be looking into but I’m doing it anyway’ look.”
“I don’t have … fine. But if you breathe a word of this to your mother, you’re fired.”
He mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key. “I promise.”
“We got a severed finger in the mail.”
“We?”
“It was sent to the house. It belongs to a woman who was reported missing a few days ago. Chris is looking into it.”
“Why would someone send you a finger?”
“I have no idea. And it was addressed to Chris. I’m guessing because he’s the new police captain.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “But it had an engagement ring and the person who reported her missing had just bought one. Chris is supposed to talk to him tomorrow.”
“Did they find her?”
“Not yet.” She wanted to tell him that the woman was fine but she couldn’t force the lie past her lips. “But that was my day.”
“Do you think the guy hurt her … the one who bought her the ring?”
“I’d like to think not. If he cared enough to ask her to marry him, I can’t imagine he’d want to cut off her finger after she’d accepted his proposal.”
“You know, I don’t remember anything this weird happening before you moved back to town,” AJ said with a half-smile.
“Are you saying I’ve bad mojo or something?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. All I know is in the last year we’ve had more crazy stuff happen in town than ever before.”
“Great, my nephew thinks I’m cursed and to blame for people getting killed in town.”
“Not what I’m saying at all! If you weren’t around to help out, they wouldn’t figure out what was really going on most of the time.”
“Give Chris and the rest of the force some credit. They get there eventually. And I think at this point they’ve kind of accepted I can be useful.”
“Well they’d be dumb not to.”
“I just worry that, if it isn’t the fiancé, there are other people out there who could be in danger.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling.” She couldn’t tell him any more about the case or her hunch. Especially since she hadn’t shared her worry with Chris yet and if she was going to tell anyone, it should be him.
They fell into silence as they turned their attention to the task at hand. Together, they managed to get the inventory entered into the system and organized for the usual customers to pick up their new issues. Kalina’s phone gave a loud double beep at 6:30. She glanced at the screen to see a text from Chris. “See you at home.”
“Hey, Aunt K. I should probably get home. Thanks for the break in monotony.”
“That’s a good SAT word,” she teased and ruffled his hair.
He gave her an annoyed look but said nothing as he pulled on his scarf and jacket. She checked the front door to ensure it was locked before she followed him out to the small back lot. He started to trudge through the snow.
“I’ll give you a ride,” she called.
Her nephew’s face lit up at the offer and he scrambled into the passenger seat as Kalina climbed behind the wheel and started the car.
“I hope you find the lady with the missing finger and that she’s okay,” he said ten minutes later, after navigating the snow piles in the center of town.
“Me too.”
As soon as AJ was out of the car, she did a U-turn and headed home. She found Chris waiting for her with a glass of wine and a roasted chicken cooling on the sideboard. She hesitated as she took the glass, tipping it to her lips but not drinking any.
His gaze narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
Kalina set the glass down and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Come on, after the day we had, you have to want a drink.”
“I’m just not in the mood for it, I guess. Thinking about what happened makes me kind of queasy.”
“Oh. Can I get you something else?”
“I’m fine.”
The scent of the cooling chicken simultaneously made her mouth water and her stomach churn. She wasn’t going to be able to hide things for much longer. Maybe now was the best time to spill the beans. They were only two weeks away from the wedding anyway. There was little chance he’d abruptly change his mind about marrying her.
“Actually, I need to tell you something,” she said and motioned for him to sit down.
“OK. What is it?” In one fluid motion he pulled out the chair and slid onto the seat.
She settled into the seat across from him and smoothed out the winkles in the hem of her dress. She opened her mouth to speak—hoping just blurting it out would quash the fear bubbling up in her chest—when Chris’s phone rang.
“It’s the station. Just give me one second.” He answered the call and swiveled to face the sink. “Captain Harper.”
She couldn’t see his facial expression and the call was turned down low enough she couldn’t overhear who was on the other end of the line. Chris let out a sigh. “You’re absolutely sure?” A pause. “”And there was a finger missing? The same one?”
Chris turned back to face Kalina and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to share her news with him. His cheeks were suddenly drawn. “They found a body out on the beach by the water.”
“Oh God. Is it Gabriella Baez?”
“No. It’s a different woman. This one’s white. She had ID on her. Her name is Margaret Fink. She was twenty-six.”
“You think she had her finger cut off with an engagement ring on it?”
“It would be my guess.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “If Gabriella isn’t dead yet, I suspect she will be soon. We might have a serial killer on our hands.”
“You’ll figure this out,” Kalina said and twisted the still-f glass of wine in front of her by the stem. “Who do you think killed this other woman?”
“I don’t know. We are still bringing Gabriella’s fiancé in for questioning in the morning. All the officers told him is that we had some information on his fiancée’s whereabouts and we needed to talk to him. And we’ll have to look into Margaret’s life to see if she also had a fiancé.”
“Do you think either of the fiancés could have killed them?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, if he’d just proposed to her and she’d said yes, it doesn’t make sense. But then again, people have plenty of reasons to end engagements.”
Like cheating partners.
He scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands. “This is not how I hoped this would go.”
She reached across the table to give his hand an affectionate and supportive squeeze. “I know. But you’ll find out what happened.”
“Sorry, what did you need to tell me?”
“Don’t worry about it. It can wait. The case is more important. I understand if you want to go back to the station to wait for the field reports.”
“No, I think right now I’m right where I need to be.” He kissed the top of her hand. “With you.”
Kalina barely slept that night. Her mind refused to quiet, instead spinning wild theories about some maniac chopping off unsuspecting women’s ring fingers. She had held off telling Chris about the pregnancy too. He needed to be laser focused on the case. News of the baby would only distract him. When the clock read 6:07 a.m., she snuck out of bed and headed down to the kitchen to make some tea. The sun was barely above the horizon as she stared out the window above the sink waiting for the water to boil. As she stood there in the silence of the early morning, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck twitched, signaling danger.
“You’re just imagining it,” she mumbled to herself but it didn’t stop her from checking the front step. No soggy box with a human finger waited for them this morning.
A tiny sigh of relief escaped her lips as the tea kettle whistled loudly. Several minutes later she sat on the couch in the living room, tea mug in one hand and her laptop propped on her knees. Chris had been using it the night before when she’d gone to bed. His work email sat open on the screen with a new message and attachment from Jimmy. The field report from Margaret’s crime scene. Without hesitating, she opened the email and read the report.
“The victim was found near the low tide marker on the beach. She was buried under snow and appears to have suffered blunt force trauma to the head. The left ring finger was likely severed prior to death based on clotting. Coroner estimates the victim has been dead for at least seventy-two hours; however, recent weather conditions may make proper determination difficult. A more accurate time of death will follow with the autopsy.”
Kalina scrolled down and stopped at the photos. The winter storm had preserved Margaret’s face in a mask of terror. She’d seen an elderly woman look that way when she and Chris had solved the revenge killings perpetrated by the police department’s former captain. It was not a sight she’d ever wanted to see again. The tea that had warmed her now roiled in her gut and she hastily set both computer and mug down to race to the downstairs bathroom. She would have liked to blame it on the morning sickness but she was nearly through the first trimester.
“Kal, are you OK?” Chris’s voice came through the closed door of the bathroom a few minutes later.
She rinsed out her mouth and opened the door. “Fine.”
“You’re pale”—he pressed his hand to her forehead—“and clammy. I think you might be coming down with something.”
“I’m not. I swear.”
His gazed narrowed and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Something is going on with you. And I think it has something to do with what you wanted to tell me last night.”
“I told you, it can wait. You need to focus on this case and find whoever’s doing this before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Right now, I need my fiancée to tell me the truth.”
She relented and pushed past him out of the bathroom. “I was going to wait to tell you until after the wedding. I didn’t want it to affect why we are getting married. But I’m pregnant. Almost twelve weeks.”
She’d pictured his reaction in her head a million times. Stunned, slack-jawed silence. Maybe some sputtering as he tried to find words. Instead, he beamed from ear to ear and pulled her into a gentle hug. “We’re having a baby!”
“Yeah. We are.” She returned the hug and let all the stress of not telling him melt away.
“That explains the wine last night,” he said in her ear.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting this reaction,” she said and leaned back to study his expression.
“We’ve talked about wanting kids.”
“I know. Just, after the wedding.”
“Technically it will be after the wedding,” he said with a smirk.
She laughed a hearty belly laugh. This was why she loved him and why she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. They stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms, until Chris’s phone once again interrupted their domestic bliss. Chris let out a groan and fished it out of his back pocket.
“I’ll call Jimmy back later.”
“No. Take it. It’s probably about the case. He sent you the report this morning,” she said. There was a time when she would have tried to hide her snooping but he was resigned to it these days.
“Did he?”
“It’s open on the laptop. You might not want to eat anything before you look at it though.”
Chris’s phone stopped ringing and he hit redial while Kalina retrieved her mug of tea and went in search of breakfast. She also set the coffee percolating, knowing Chris would need at least one cup before he left for the day.
“Sorry I missed you before. What’s… Jimmy, slow down and take a breath.” He switched the phone to his other ear. “It went to who? No, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He ended the call and pulled a travel mug from the cabinet beside the stove. “I’m going to need that to go. Another finger’s shown up.”
“Did it go to the precinct?”
“No. It was sent to a reporter named Beth Finnegan. Whoever this guy is, he’s getting bolder.”
Kalina wanted to join Chris at the station to hear what the reporter had to say but she knew it would be better for the investigation if she wasn’t present. There was still some digging she could do on her own. The name Margaret Fink was starting to ring a bell. So, as Chris hastily pulled on his coat and hat, she set about getting dressed so she could head to work. A plan was beginning to form in the back of her mind as she pulled in behind the shop a little before 8:30.
The interior was as she and AJ had left it the evening before: slightly messy but with a certain order to the chaos. She wasn’t set to open for another half hour so she had time to search through the files for what she was looking for. Settling into one of the big chairs in the game room, she pulled up the roster of monthly orders. As she’d suspected, Margaret Fink had an outstanding order from a couple weeks earlier and she had listed Carter Whalen as an authorized person to pick up the orders. It wasn’t as though comics were prescription drugs but many of her regulars took their collections seriously enough to only allow pick-up by certain people.
A quick bit of Facebook stalking revealed that Margaret and Carter had recently gotten engaged. She’d changed her profile picture to one of the two of them showing off the ring. Without being friends, Kalina couldn’t enlarge the picture to get a good look at the ring but she had a hunch it resembled Gabriella’s. She was about to dial Carter’s phone number on the pretense of having him pick up her outstanding order when she realized she could at least confirm whether Carter had purchased the ring from Carmichael’s.
“Damn.” The curse escaped her lips before she could stop herself as the snapshot of the ledger confirmed that he was the other man on the list.
Overcome by sudden emotion, she had to sit in silence for a moment or two to collect herself. She wanted to believe it was the pregnancy hormones beginning to kick in but she was just lying to herself. Luring a man in to ask him questions about his dead fiancée was not what normal people did. Her hands shook as she entered his phone number and hit “Call”. As it rang, Kalina tried to prepare herself to leave as benign a message as possible.
“Hello?” A man’s baritone answered the call.
“Is this Carter Whalen?” Her voice hitched as she spoke his name.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“My name is Kalina Greystone. I own Geeks and Things here in town. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Margaret Fink about an outstanding order that she has waiting for her. She has you listed as someone who can pick it up.”
“Oh. Sorry about that. Things have been kind of crazy lately. I can come by and pick them up if you want.”
“That’d be great. If you stop by now you can get them before we open.”
“Great. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She ended the call and wiped at the corners of her eyes. She needed to look presentable and as though she didn’t know his fiancée had been found murdered on the beach. The fact that she could have been dead for a few days by now made her curious. He didn’t seem concerned about her whereabouts or wellbeing.
Ten minutes later, she heard a knock on the front door. She’d already pulled Margaret’s order and packaged it up. Carter looked a little dazed as she pulled open the front door and flipped the front sign to “Open”. He was shorter than she’d expected from the picture on Facebook.
“I’m glad you could come by,” she said and darted behind the front counter.
“Sure. So how much do I owe you?”
“Fifteen dollars.”
“Maggie loves these things. I’ve never seen someone get so into graphic novels before.”
She noted his use of the present tense. If he was lying, he was doing a very good job of it. She took his twenty dollar bill and handed a five back.
“So, do you know why she hasn’t been by to pick them up? Usually diehard fans are very prompt with their pick-up.”
Carter rubbed his neck and laughed. “That’s probably my fault. We got engaged a couple weeks ago and we’ve been diving head first into planning. We don’t want a long engagement.”
“Oh. That’s understandable. Congrats by the way.”
“Thanks.” He picked up the bag and tucked it carefully into his jacket. “She’s visiting some friends out of town for a few days right now. Sort of her last hurrah before we really get buried in the planning.”
He really didn’t know his fiancée was dead. No one could be that good at lying without having no emotions and this guy clearly cared a great deal about the woman he’d asked to marry him. Before she could say anything, her phone rang. The Caller ID indicated it was from the station.
“Excuse me,” she said and turned her back to answer the call. “Hello?”
“Hey, hon. I have a weird question for you,” Chris said on the other end.
“OK. What is it?”
“You don’t happen to know a Carter Whalen? He’s Margaret’s fiancé.”
“Yes, I know that. I can stop by if you want.”
“He’s there with you, isn’t he?” Chris’s tone carried an edge of worry.
“Yeah. So I’ll see you soon.”
She ended the call before Chris could say anything else and turned to face Carter. He was pulling on his gloves. “That was my fiancé. He’s the new police captain.”
“Oh. Well, I guess congratulations are in order for you too.”
“He’s looking for you. He needs to talk to you about Margaret.”
“Why?”
“Because they found her on the beach last night.”
Carter’s stare turned blank and his body swayed side to side as he took in the information. Kalina wanted to offer a hand to steady him but she’d just delivered the worst news a person could get. He didn’t want her comfort.
“I need to see her,” he said barely above a whisper.
“I’ll take you to the station. And I’m very sorry for your loss.”