The Root of All Trouble (13 page)

Unsurprisingly, there wasn
't much information. The crash had been twenty years ago, after all. The best articles I found were from the
Cincinnati Enquirer
. Summed up, four people died in a private plane crash in northern Kentucky, shortly after liftoff from Lunken airfield. The FAA was investigating the deaths of the Thiessen family. Dad Eric, mom Annette, son Seth, and daughter Ashley.

Eric Thiessen had owned a German pub, The Black Fox, just north of here, and Annette had been the secretary at a suburban elementary school. Seth, a sophomore, had been a popular student at
Freedom High School, and his younger sister Ashley, a freshman, was an All-State gymnast.

My heart clenched a bit at the memories. Of Mrs. Thiessen
's smile. Of the way Seth always rubbed my head. Of my awe at how Ashley could tumble and do flips. I hadn't known Mr. Thiessen well—he'd always been busy working.

Leaning back on my pillows, I wished I could remember more from that time. But I
'd been young and happily delusional about how suddenly life could change.

I gave myself a good shake and typed Joey
's wife's name into the search engine. Fortunately, her name was unusual and there was only one Honey Miller listed in the Cincinnati area.

A few clicks led me to Honey
's Twitter page. She had a lot to say about her retail job at a local mall and the colorful characters she met every day. Nothing about Joey at all. And she also used proper grammar, so I concluded she was educated—something I wouldn't have guessed by looking at her. I supposed that's what I got for judging people by their trampy covers.

It was obvious what Joey had seen in her, but what had she seen in him? He was at least ten years older than her, creepy
, and a slimeball. Not exactly husband material.

I decided Honey was a good place for Ana and me to start our search into Joey
's death.

Because Mr. Cabrera was right. Crimes of passion were common and it seemed to me that Honey Miller would have just as much motive
to want Joey dead as Delphine.

Maybe more.

And framing her husband's mistress for the crime? Icing on the cake.

I also couldn
't rule out the rest of Delphine's crew. All had beefs with Joey. All had the afternoon off from work. And I could picture all of them bashing Joey's head in.

I had a gruesome imagination.

I did quick searches for Plum, Bear, and Ethan and couldn't find much of anything. Depending on how Ana and I did today, I might have to get Tam involved. She was a computer whiz and could uncover all kinds of information with only a few clicks.

I heard a car door slam and voices rise in a heated cacophony.

Leaving a sleeping Gracie behind, I headed downstairs just as Maria waddled through the front door, Perry and Mario hot on her heels.

"
You're impossible," Perry was saying.

"
Me?" Mario countered. "You're the one who wants the gauche seven thousand dollar gilded mirror. It has golden lion heads on it. Lions! Hello, Liberace!"

Perry gasped.
"That mirror is perfection. Maria, tell him."

"
It is stunning," she said. "But perhaps not everyone's taste."

My sister, being tactful? What had they done to her?

"Liberace stunning," Mario said in a biting tone.

Perry folded his arms.
"Admit it, the price tag is your true issue with it."

"
What are you trying to say?" Mario asked with narrowed eyes.

Mr. Cabrera poked his head over the back of the couch.
"I think he's saying you're cheap."

I threw him another evil eye. He was racking them up today.

He shrugged and lowered himself back down.

"
Is that what you're saying?" Mario pressed Perry.

Perry said,
"If the penny-pinching fits..."

Mario seethed. Steam practically shot out
of his ears.

I couldn
't blame him. He wasn't cheap, necessarily. He liked nice things. He was just more practical than Perry.

"
I take it the meeting didn't go well," I said.

Maria lowered herself into the recliner. There was exhaustion in her eyes but also excitement, too. She loved being in the thick of things—something she
'd missed out on while being on bed rest.

"
That depends," Mario said. "If you enjoy a home decorated like a brothel then the meeting went perfectly."

"
A high-class brothel," Perry clarified.

"
I don't see why we need a decorator at all," Mario said.

"
Cheap, cheap, cheap," Mr. Cabrera sang, and I wondered if he'd been drinking again.

"
Impossible!" Perry shouted again.

"
Boys, boys. You both just need to learn to compromise a bit," Maria said, sounding like the voice of reason. "Like Nate and I did."

Like Nate, she meant. As far as I knew she
'd never compromised a day in her life.

"
Speaking of," I said, "when is Nate getting here?"

Her blue gaze flicked to me.
"Tomorrow. Monday at the latest."

"
What?" I cried. Perhaps a little louder than I intended.

"
Have some compassion, Nina," she said. "He's on assignment. There were tornadoes in northern Kentucky and he's down there helping with the cleanup."

"
Yeah, Nina," Mr. Cabrera said.

I leaned over the couch and peered down at him.
"What's that? You're ready to go home? Let me help you pack."

He pulled the covers over his head.

"That's what I thought."

Maria snapped her fingers at me.
"Can you bring me a water?"

I sucked in a deep breath and headed for the fridge.

"If not for me and my frugality," Mario was saying, "we wouldn't have half the nice things we do. We wouldn't have a house!"

"
And if not for your cheapness, then I'd have
all
the nice things I want."

I handed Maria a water bottle and noticed how Mario had fallen silent. I didn
't blame him—Perry had hit a little below the belt with that comment.

Mr. Cabrera tugged the blanket off his face.
"Nina, don't forget to give Perry the present that came for him."

I groaned inwardly. I hadn
't warned Mr. Cabrera not to say anything about it.

"
Another one?" Mario asked.

Perry rubbed his hands together.
"Where is it?"

"
My room," I said reluctantly.

Perry took the stairs two at a time, and I glared at Mr. Cabrera. He disappeared under his covers again.

"What's this about presents?" Maria asked.

No one answered her.

"Helloooo?" she said.

I gave her the evil eye, too.

"Hmmph," she said, clamping her lips together.

Perry was back in a flash and already unwrapping the present as he walked.
"A Hermés tie! Ooh la la!"

Mario huffed, stormed past Perry and me, and stomped up the stairs. The door to Riley
's door slammed and suddenly Gracie's barking filled the air.

"
You should probably take her out, Nina," Maria said.

I clenched my fists.

"You're so gorgeous," Perry cooed to his tie.

I looked between them all, feeling my frustration rising.
"You," I pointed at Maria, "can learn to say please and thank you." I spun on Perry. "And you are acting a little spoiled. Material things aren't what's important in life, which you'll soon learn on your own if you keep this up. Go upstairs and fix this with Mario right now. And you," I said, yanking off Mr. Cabrera's blanket, "need to get off my couch and get it through your thick bed-head that you're about to lose Ursula for good. And you can either be miserable and mourn her now or be with her for the next God-knows-how-many years – because you know she'll outlive all of us – and be happy as drunken clams together. Fix. It. And don't dilly-dally."

They all stared at me.

Finally, Perry said, "Drunken clams?"

"
Argh!" Jamming my feet into my flip-flops, I grabbed my purse and walked out the front door.

Chapter Twelve

A
na handed me a Twizzler. "So you just left them all there?"

We sat in Ana
's hatchback in a parking lot across the street from Joey Miller's townhouse, an end unit in a small complex, discussing my earlier outburst toward my house guests. "I couldn't take another second of them."

This wasn
't Ana's and my first stakeout.

Or second.

We'd come prepared with Twizzlers, Snickers bars, chips, and Dr Pepper. Fortunately the surveillance of Honey Miller included restrooms with the close proximity of an UDF—a gas station convenience store that anchored the strip mall where we were parked—and where we bought our goodies. I couldn't help but remember our first stakeout and how Ana had to pee in the woods. It hadn't been pretty with the discovery of poison ivy nearby. Amusing, yes. Pretty, no.

"
They worked my last nerve," I said.

"
How much of it was their behavior versus your mixed-up feelings about that guy Cain?"

I
'd told her all about the mysterious Cain Monahan. She'd never known Seth—she had moved to Freedom after he died, but she knew my heartbreak over his death.

"
Maybe some," I admitted.

"
Maybe a lot."

I chewed on my licorice. Duke, my trainer, would have a stroke if he knew all the junk I
'd eaten today. With any luck he'd never, ever, find out.

Across the street no one had gone in or out of the Miller
's townhouse. Two cars sat in a narrow driveway, a pickup that belonged to Joey and a sporty white Mazda that Honey drove.

We knew Honey was home because we
'd seen her walk by the front window several times, a cell phone glued to her ear.

She
'd been laughing as she talked.

Not quite the behavior of a grieving widow.

"What are you going to do about this Cain situation?" Ana asked. "I can see how much it's bugging you."

Sunbeams bounced off the windshield, highlighting all the rain spots and streaks left behind by yesterday
's storm. "I need to see his eyes. Then I'll know for sure that Cain isn't Seth, and I'll be able to put this whole thing to rest."

"
You don't really think this guy is Seth, do you?"

My mind said no.

My heart said maybe.

I answered as honestly as I could.
"I don't know."

"
Well, whatever you're planning to get to the bottom of this, I'm in."

"
What would I do without you?"

"
Your life would be
soooo
boring." She grinned at me, and then wrestled another Twizzler from the package.

A car pulled into the lot and parked next to us. A young woman glanced over and gave me a suspicious stare.

That was me. Nina Colette Suspicious Ceceri Quinn.

I offered her a smile to prove that I wasn
't some crazy whack-job lurking in a parking lot, but it apparently only confirmed her suspicions. She backed out of her spot and parked in the next row over.

"
Are we going to go and talk to Honey?" Ana asked.

I stretched my legs, grateful for the extra room on the passenger side.
"In a little bit. I just want to watch her for a while. See if anyone comes or goes."

The parking lot we were in served a strip mall of five businesses, with the UDF on one end and a bank on the other. In between were a pizzeria, a dance studio, and a dry cleaner. I looked over my shoulder at the bank, then at the convenience store.

"What are you looking at?" Ana asked.

"
The businesses here are bound to have surveillance cameras, especially the bank and the convenience store."

Her brown eyes widened.
"You think they might have recorded something across the street?"

I knew from Perry that Mario had last seen Joey at three o
'clock and that he hadn't been alone. Had the cameras caught the identity of the mystery man who'd been arguing with Joey? "I'm just wondering if Joey was seen going out after Delphine left the other day."