A hint of murder, p.1
A Hint of Murder, page 1
A HINT OF MURDER
KARIN KAUFMAN
Copyright © 2024 by Karin Kaufman
Cover design by Molly Burton of Cozy Cover Designs
Published by Winter Tree Books
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing texts.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Author and series information at KarinKaufman.com
Contents
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
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Also by Karin Kaufman
Murder by Memo
For all my dogs, past, present, and future.
CHAPTER 1
I stood at my open front door drinking my morning coffee, watching my neighbors on Evergreen Road dash out their doors to snatch up their wet newspapers. Most mornings I drank my first cup on the front steps, with Stella, my Aussie dog, at my side. And most mornings I’d wave hello to all the dog walkers passing by my blueberry-colored house.
Loads of people on Evergreen owned a dog. But then, Fairwood, Colorado, the place I’d called home for more than a year and a half, was a dog-loving town.
So I stood at my door, taking in the fresh scents of late April, warmed by my caramel coffee but a little chilly in the long-sleeved tee I’d bought at the Alpine Center in Rocky Mountain National Park. You’d have thought something bought at an Alpine anything would have been warmer.
Across the street, Eric Muller saw me and raised a hand in greeting. I raised my cup in return. Then he darted out to his newspaper, which had been magically delivered to the very end of his driveway—as far as one could get from his house and still be on his property.
“It’s wet out there, Stella,” I said, stating the glaringly obvious, as dog lovers often did when talking to their furry friends. “We’ll walk later. In the meantime, I’m cold, aren’t you?”
I was about to shut the door when my eyes were drawn to a small plastic bag tied with white string to the trunk of a crabapple in my front yard. And something was inside the bag.
“Stay here, baby.”
I ran out, coffee cup and all, and yanked on the bag, freeing it from the string, then ran back inside and shook the rain from my brown, shoulder-length hair. Stella nudged the bag with her nose. I took it to the kitchen counter, pried open the zip strips, and pulled out a cream-colored envelope.
As I lifted the tucked flap on the envelope—it was unsealed—my first thought was that a neighbor had tied the bag to the tree, maybe to ask what variety of crabapple it was. The tree was flowering, its pink petals spectacular.
Of course, any neighbor of mine would’ve simply knocked on my door.
I unfolded the cream-colored paper I found inside the envelope and read the printed message:
I have killed a resident of Fairwood. I will take another victim in exactly forty-eight hours, unless you trace my clues to the victim’s identity. Prepare yourself to receive eight hints. If you are as clever as they say, you can stop me before I strike again. If not, someone else will die. It is up to you, Kelsie Butler. Are you ready?
This is Hint Number One:
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.”
Was this supposed to be funny? I tossed the note to my kitchen table, then grabbed my coffee from the counter and sat. What on earth? The paper was ordinary, about five by seven inches, and the writing on it had been created by either a laser or inkjet printer. It was unsigned.
The so-called hint was a line from a Shakespeare sonnet. Sonnet 18, if memory served. One of Shakespeare’s most famous.
My eyes shot back to the first line: I have killed a resident of Fairwood.
Stated so flatly, so matter-of-factly, it struck me as weirdly sincere, and it sent a shiver down my spine.
But if someone had been murdered in my town of 8,500 residents, I would have heard by now.
Almost immediately, I reconsidered that too-quick conclusion. I didn’t subscribe to our small-town newspaper, I rarely listened to the radio or TV news, and the people on my street weren’t the type to knock on my door with that kind of news, so if someone had been murdered late yesterday, I wouldn’t have heard. And the note said the deed had already been done: I have killed. It had happened before this morning.
If it had happened at all.
Which I doubted.
No, someone was trying to poke fun at me. Since last October I’d had good luck investigating several murders in Fairwood, along with my friends Angela Drummond and Gwen Hadley, and my name had appeared in more than one Colorado paper. I was also known, and somewhat disliked, by the Fairwood Police, though I got along well enough with the chief, Davis Sinclair.
The someone who was toying with me, trying to wreck my Monday, probably knew that I’d been an adjunct English professor at a community college in Colorado Springs before moving to Fairwood. Otherwise, why use Shakespeare as a hint? I lived for Shakespeare and Keats. And mystery novels.
I leaned sideways and gave Stella a scratch under her chin. “He should have written a line from an Agatha Christie. That would be more difficult, wouldn’t it? It would sound like Agatha—yes, it would, baby girl—but it would be hard to pinpoint the exact book.”
I straightened. Then again, was I correct in thinking the line in the note was from Sonnet 18? It had to be. It was one of the bard’s most quoted sonnets—unfortunately, because I didn’t think it was his best.
A far superior hint would’ve been a line from his Sonnet 116: “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds.” There was no finer or more succinct description of true and steadfast love than that. Even my husband, Adam, who’d been killed on his way to Denver by a drunk driver just two months after our move to Fairwood, had loved that line, and he’d been a history major in college.
“Let’s go check my memory, Stella.”
I rose and went to one of my bookshelves in the living room. There on the bottom shelf—sitting down there because there was no room on the normal-sized shelves—was my large and weighty Complete Classic Shakespeare, and old mustard-colored textbook from my undergraduate days. The Mustard Shakespeare, Angela called it.
I started to flip to the sonnets at the back, but the book easily fell open to that section, to where I thought I’d left a bookmark of some kind.
Only now I saw it wasn’t a bookmark. It was a cream-colored envelope, sitting right at Sonnet 18.
I drew in a breath, and the hair rose on my neck. I swung back to the kitchen.
There was no one there, of course, or Stella would have alerted me. And there couldn’t have been anyone in the house while I slept last night. Stella would’ve sensed an intruder.
But whoever had written the note that was now on my kitchen table had entered my house, my haven, at some point and slipped this second note between the pages of my Shakespeare.
I put the book on my coffee table and removed a piece of paper from the envelope, my hands beginning to shake:
That was excessively easy, Kelsie. But I wanted you to see now how the game operates. One hint will lead to another and then another, until you can stop me, though I do not think highly of your chances. From here on, the game escalates. It is up to you. Are you ready to save a life? Or will you fail?
This is Hint Number Two:
“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell / To toll me back from thee to my sole self!”
I knew straightaway it was a line from Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.” Someone understood me well, and that someone was—what? Yanking my chain?
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the notes were deadly serious.
I found my volume of Keats poems and flipped through the pages, then I hung the book upside down by the covers and shook it. Then I went to the poem itself and found nothing between the pages. I was both disappointed and relieved.
Next I checked the locks on my front and back door—no sign of them being jimmied—and did the same with all my windows. I saw nothing you’d expect to see in a forcible entry, like broken door jambs and scraped paint from a credit card. Aside from Angela, no one possessed a copy of my house key. So how . . . ?
“Stella, come on, girl, we’re off to Fig’s.”
I stuck the notes and envelopes in my mini backpack, pulled on a rain jacket, leashed Stella, and went out to my Ford Bronco. Stella settled onto her cushy comforter in the cargo area and I drove for Fig’s Coffee House on Fairwood Square, the heart of tiny downtown Fairwood.
Owned by Gwen and her husband Forrest, Fig’s was where Angela enjoyed her mornin
I knew I had to speak to the police. Someone had broken into my house, and they might do it again. The crime had to be reported. But Gwen and Angela, my fellow mystery lovers, would surely have something to say about the game I was being asked to play.
So it was off to Fig’s first, and then the police station. I thought it best to shoot photos of the notes and study them and the envelopes before I handed all of it over.
As I headed north on Evergreen Road, the rain picked up suddenly, hammering my windshield. Taking a right at Spruce Street, I entered the square, home to Fig’s, a gourmet bakery, an art gallery and store, an herb and botanical shop—and really, everything I ever wanted or needed. I never drove to Denver, about fifty miles south. Why would I?
I parked two shops down from Fig’s and shut off the engine. My suspicious mind couldn’t help but ask if one of the scurrying shoppers I saw was the Hint Writer. Or was it one of my neighbors? No, I liked my neighbors too much to entertain that possibility for more than two seconds.
But someone had broken into my house, and the more I thought that over, the more unnerved I became. Someone was angry enough to break the law, frighten me in a very personal way, and pressure me into playing a twisted game by telling me if I didn’t play, someone would die.
The Hint Writer knew me very well.
CHAPTER 2
I shook the rain from my umbrella, snapped it back down, and entered Fig’s. Angela, seated at a window table drinking her coffee, spotted me and greeted Stella enthusiastically—me a little less so. I left Stella at the table while I went to the counter to order my caramel macchiato.
After ordering, I asked Gwen if she’d heard of any bad news from yesterday or last night, without specifying murder. Fig’s was such a popular spot, and Gwen was so well liked—and outgoing—that I was certain she’d know before the papers if anything unusual had happened in town.
But according to my friend, all was well and quite ordinary.
She eyed me suspiciously. “Why do you ask? What do you know?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “But someone broke into my house in the last twenty-four hours, I do know that.”
“Oh, Kelsie! Are you serious? Are you all right? Go sit, go sit.” She waved me away, off to Angela’s table. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
At the table, I hung my backpack on the chair, but I waited for Gwen to arrive with my order before I dug out the notes and envelopes and laid them on the table. I only wanted to explain the situation once.
When I’d finished describing the morning’s events, I sat back and waited for my friends’ verdicts.
A glance passed between Angela and Gwen.
Angela spoke first. “What sort of stunt is this? It’s revolting.”
Gwen concurred, but added, “The break-in takes it out of stunt territory, I think. You need to tell the police about it.”
“I’m heading there after I leave here,” I said. “Whether or not these notes are a joke, someone invaded my home, and I’m going to find out who.”
“What if the murder threat is real?” Gwen asked.
“We would’ve heard if someone had been murdered in Fairwood,” Angela pointed out.
“I wonder if the person who wrote those notes lives here,” Gwen said. “That would be hard to believe. I’ve met your neighbors. None of them would do this, even as a prank.”
But Angela was unapologetically suspicious of my neighbors, declaring that one of them must be the Hint Writer. Only a neighbor would know that I drank coffee on my front steps every morning and was sure to see the note tied to the tree.
“You know I drink coffee there,” I countered.
“Gwen and I know, sure, but it’s not like we go around telling people that. It’s not a widely known fact that Kelsie Butler drinks her first cup of the day with Stella on her front step. With a prime view of her dwarf crabapple tree.”
I had to concede the point.
“Another thing to consider,” Gwen said. “If you didn’t drink your coffee on your stoop, how long would it have been before you saw the note?”
“One day, two at most,” I replied.
Gwen nodded. “That delay would’ve spoiled the writer’s forty-eight-hour timeline. Are you sure the note wasn’t there yesterday?”
“Positive. From my front door, sitting or standing, you couldn’t miss it.” I took a break to sip my caramel macchiato. “The note was in a clear plastic bag, so maybe it was raining when it was tied to the tree, or the writer knew the forecast.”
“The note must have been tied to the tree at night, don’t you think?” Angela asked.
“I think so. I got home about four yesterday, and I’m sure it wasn’t there when I pulled into the garage.”
“So it was tied to the tree last night,” Gwen said confidently.
“But the break-in must’ve happened before that,” I pointed out. “He had to make sure the second note was already in place in my Shakespeare book. The break-in could’ve happened days or even weeks ago.”
“You’re right,” Angela said. “The second note you found had to be placed in your book before you found the note on your tree.”
I cast my thoughts back. “I haven’t touched that Shakespeare book in six months or more. This might’ve been planned well in advance. I had neighbors over around Christmas, I’ve had a handyman inside my house while I was in my office, supposedly to work in my kitchen, but I didn’t keep an eye on him.”
Gwen stood and pushed in her chair. Fig’s was at the tail-end of its big morning rush and she needed to return to the counter. She’d trained her part-timers well, but they’d never reached her level of efficiency, and besides, Fig’s customers wanted to see Gwen’s smiling face almost as much as they wanted their coffee.
“I can leave at three today,” she said. “Meet at your house, Kelsie? You’re the one with the ten-pound books.”
“Three o’clock,” I said.
Gwen walked off, and I shot photos of the notes and envelopes. I didn’t want to hand them over to the police, but if they insisted, I’d have to. “Do you notice anything odd about these?” I asked, waving a hand over the items.
Angela leaned forward. “Nice but common paper and envelopes. There’s no point in looking for fingerprints now, I suppose.” She glanced up.
“I didn’t even think of that. There could still be prints on the two books. But if I know the Fairwood Police, they probably won’t bother dusting for prints. Did you notice the notes were run out on a laser or inkjet printer that left a short, faint scuff on the left margin?”
“I see. The printer’s out of alignment or it’s just old.”
“That scuff is like a fingerprint.”
“You can’t go about testing people’s printers.”
“Hardly. Notice there’s nothing printed on the envelopes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Probably nothing. And there’s no watermark on the paper. The envelopes are unmarked and unlined, so there’s no easy way to determine the brand. It’s cheap paper, but not the cheapest.”
“Neither fancy nor bargain-basement. Totally undistinguished, and therefore totally unhelpful.”
Angela drew my attention to the second note, her finger carefully hovering above the paper. “This is from a Keats poem?”
“I thought you were English.”
“I’m a Geordie from Newcastle. Who is the ‘thee’ he mentions? A love?”
“The line’s from ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ and the ‘thee’ is the bird. It’s a melancholy poem, really. ‘Where but to think is to be full of sorrow.’”
“Charming. I wonder why your break-in artist chose it. How’s that line supposed to direct you to the next hint? Should you be looking for something to do with nightingales or other birds?”
“He’s not going to make it that simple.”
I downed the rest of my macchiato and tried my elegant best to put the notes and their envelopes in my backpack without touching them too much.
“I’m off. You coming at three? You can come earlier.”
“I’ll be there at two,” Angela said. She reached out a hand to pet Stella. “Anyone who dares break into your house should be strung up. I’m glad dogs can hear better than us humans.”
