Wake Up to Murder (A Ricki Rydell Mystery Book 2) Read online

  He was still in his police uniform. “How is she handling it?”

  Ricki heard this, but the two didn’t exactly make much effort in keeping their voices low.

  “She seems to be all right.”

  “All right.” Ricki handed Megan to Thea. “What’s going on?” Just then, her cell rang. It was her agent. Now was so not a good time for her to be calling. “Hey, Tracy. What’s up?”

  “Just calling to ask how you’re doing.”

  “I’m fine.” She searched the faces of everyone standing in her house gawking at her. “Why is everyone so concerned for me all of a sudden?”

  Becca turned to Chris. “Guess she doesn’t know.”

  Ricki moved the phone away from her mouth. “Doesn’t know what? Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

  “Do you have company?” Tracy said. “I’ll let you go.” The phone went dead. That was unusually abrupt. Unless her agent was mad at her, which wasn’t evident in her voice, she didn’t understand why Tracy hung up on her. What was going on?

  Ricki crossed her arms and stared at Becca because she knew no one in her family would be the first to tell her the truth. “Out with it.”

  “We saw the show.”

  “I figured. She pulled a bait and switch on me.”

  “I told you.” Chris said that to Mom and Dad.

  “I mean, I knew something was up when she started asking the questions we didn’t practice.” Becca stood before Ricki, hands on her shoulders, trying to get her to relax. “We didn’t think, you know, whatever.”

  “Just say it. I sucked. Thank goodness no one else saw it but you guys.”

  Chris jerked his head toward the ceiling and spun on his heel. “Oh boy.”

  “You mean…” Ricki squeezed her eyes shut. “Who else saw it?”

  “Grace1 said there was only a small crowd watching at the diner,” Thea said. “It was biscuits and gravy morning, so everyone was busy eating, I’m sure. Grace2 said the library—”

  “You’re not helping, Thea,” Andy said.

  Ricki fell to the couch and hugged her knees. “Taryn said hardly anyone knew about the show. The publicity campaign was a failure she said.” She sighed heavily. “I feel like I’ve been punked.”

  Becca rushed to her side, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Despite a few trolls, you have a lot of support online.”

  “Online?!”

  “There’s a clip of the show on YouTube.” Becca shrugged, making it sound like it was no big deal. “You’ve become a meme.”

  Ricki buried her face in her hands. “Show me.”

  Thea rushed over, baby Megan reaching out to her mother. “Honey, let’s eat pie. You don’t want to watch that.”

  “It’s good she hears about it from us instead of finding out on her own.”

  “No, I want to see it. Give me my phone.”

  “Don’t worry, I got it.” Becca swiped through her phone, straight to YouTube and loaded the video. Such a good friend, she was. “It’s short, and it’s only gotten a few views.”

  “Viewed two-hundred times is hardly a few.”

  “When you think how big the internet is, that’s a few.”

  Ricki watched in horror as the moment she broke the charm bracelet and sent the beads flying all over the stage played on a loop to a sample of funky techno music. The zooming in and out of her surprised expression was a nice touch. As per usual, the comment section was sprinkled with mean comments buried among a surprising number of supportive ones. Ricki clicked off the video and shoved the phone at Becca.

  “Let’s have some pie.”

  “I’ll get it, dear,” Thea said, patting Ricki’s hands. “You sit tight and let me take care of you.”

  “Mom, I can get it.” Ricki didn’t bother to move from the couch. She knew better than to fight her mother on letting her help. “Anything else I should know?”

  The room fell silent, no one meeting Ricki’s questioning gaze.

  “Just show her,” Chris whispered. “Get it over with before Mom comes in and catches you.”

  “Your mom didn’t want us to show you this, but you’re going to see it sooner or later. Might as well get it over with now.”

  Becca showed Ricki another video. Shot on a camera phone, obviously. The scene was dark, cars in a dimly lit parking lot, with sounds of waves crashing against the shore, and a girl who sounded oddly like Ricki yelling. Someone had recorded the fight she had with Kari and uploaded it to the internet. The title of the video read: Romance Writer Behaving Badly

  “I’m mortified. Let me see that.” The video played on. Ricki didn’t realize how mad she was that night. Seeing it from the point of view of a spectator was very different from how she remembered it going down. Whoever recorded this even captured the moment Ricki nearly ran Kari over with her car. Wow. She didn’t know she had gotten that close to Kari. But there it was right before her eyes—a painful reminder of her emotional outburst. She scrolled to the comments. One comment, posted less than an hour ago, stood out: Now that this woman is dead, this video is going to go viral, yo. Ricki thrust the phone in Becca’s hand.

  “You okay?” Becca asked. “I can teach you how to drink.”

  “It said she’s dead.”

  “Who?” Chris said.

  “Kari, obviously. Have you heard anything about her?”

  “I just got off duty, so I don’t know.”

  “Let me check,” Becca said.

  Rumpus bounded up onto the couch and nudged Ricki into giving him a good scratch. She needed his comfort. Her stomach churned with acid as she waited for Becca to find something online about Kari.

  “Oh my.”

  “What?”

  “Local news website says a woman’s body was pulled from Lake Somerset about two hours ago. So far, they haven’t been able to identify her.”

  “What color hair?”

  “It says blonde.”

  Ricki felt that stomach acid working its way up the back of her throat and tickling her gag reflex. “That might be her.” She turned to Chris. “Can you find out more?”

  He nodded and raced out of the house.

  “I hope to hell that’s not her.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Andy said.

  “Dad, she’s missing. It’s probably her.”

  Ricki hugged Rumpus, but all she could think about was Marty.

  Nine

  After her family left, Ricki watched the videos over and over again, cringing each time. It only got worse after the twentieth view. Two separate accounts uploaded two different videos. The video from the show was most definitely taken from someone’s television while they were watching the show. Did someone sit around waiting to catch famous or semi-famous people doing embarrassing things? Because that’s what it looked like. The other videos on the account were all of celebrities caught doing dumb things like slipping and falling on stage, nip-slips on the red carpet, or accidentally yanking a charm off a bracelet and sending the pieces of it flying in the air during a live interview. Hey, but only fifteen people saw the show, right Taryn?

  The video of the fight in the parking lot was another story. That wasn’t on live television, so whoever recorded it was there that evening. Judging by the shakiness of the video, the person was walking and recording at the same time. It was crowded that night at Hilltop Inn. It could have been anyone. Things like that happened. No big deal. Except the person who uploaded the video tagged Ricki’s name in the meta-data and had only this one video on their account. New user? She’d check back later to see if they uploaded anything else. She suspected the owner of the account wouldn’t.

  She never got to take that hike yesterday morning. This day was shaping up to be better than the day before, and since she was feeling especially restless, she would try to get herself and Rumpus outside before anyone else brought disaster to her door. She packed a bag of snacks, doggie treats, water bottle, and portable doggie dish and headed out. There was still no
word on the identity of the body pulled from Lake Somerset. Ricki promised herself she wasn’t going to sit in front of the television or refresh the local news station’s website waiting for that news to come in. She had to get out of the house or her thoughts were going to eat her alive.

  As the car warmed, and Ricki got Rumpus buckled in the back seat, her phone vibrated. It was a text from Chris: Marty just left after ID’ing her. Sorry, Ricki. Looks like foul play. I know you were hoping for a different outcome.

  Her heart sank at the thought of Marty having to identify his fiancée. She couldn’t imagine what he must have been going through at that moment.

  Ricki needed to be out now more than ever. She lost herself on the hiking trail. Between trying to keep Rumpus from running off and herself from tripping over hidden rocks, she was grateful for the healing distraction of nature. It also helped that cell reception wasn’t good where she was, forcing her not to call Becca or her mom or surf the internet for more information about Kari. She’d do that later.

  As she got closer to the river, she hooked Rumpus on his leash and hiked up the hill to the rocks that jutted out over top of the water. Ferncliff was where everyone went for the spectacular view, especially photographers. Yogis found their Zen moments there. Newly married couples even trekked through the woods to get that perfect wedding photo up on those rocks. Because it was a brisk fall morning, and a weekday, she didn’t expect to see anyone on the rock ledge, but she had company. Rumpus barked when he saw the photographers, startling most of them.

  “Sorry about that,” Ricki said.

  “S’all right. I have a beagle myself.” The man knelt down, presenting the back of his hand to Rumpus. He gave it a good sniff. “And what’s your name, little guy.”

  “That’s Rumpus. I’m Ricki.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ricki noticed that the other photographer had turned toward her. “Ricki Rydell.”

  She did a double-take. “Damon.” He still had a habit of smiling a lot, but it was a nice smile to see. She needed a friendly smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “I see you two know each other,” the one guy said. “I’m Damon’s business partner, Aaron.”

  “That’s cool. So, what’s the name of your construction company going to be? You never did tell me.”

  “We are officially Evers & Moore.” Damon reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a business card. “Hot off the presses.”

  “Nice logo. I guess dropping the s off your name and calling yourselves Evermore would have been too much. Or if your first name started with an n you could have called yourselves Nevermore. Quote the raven and all that rot. A little Poe humor. Anyway.” Ricki cleared her throat and kicked at the ground. “I’m babbling.”

  Damon and Aaron looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Told you,” Damon said.

  “Told him what?” Ricki blushed at the thought of Damon talking about her to other people.

  “I told him how funny you are.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

  “Just clearing my head.” She was going to leave it at that. No need to provide information she had no desire to even talk about. It was hard enough to think about, and she was trying not to think about anything. “Great day for a hike. Rumpus was bored, too. What about you? What are you doing out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Taking pictures for some friends in California. They’ve never seen a northeastern autumn, so I thought I’d take some photos for them. We were just about to head back for lunch. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “Raincheck? I’m not quite ready to go back.”

  “Maybe some other time, then. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” He winked at her.

  “I’m sure.”

  Aaron and Damon packed up their camera equipment and left Ricki and Rumpus alone, standing on top of the world. Such a glorious view of the river snaking through orange, red, and yellow colors shimmering in the early afternoon sunlight. Down below her, life was complicated. Her ex’s fiancée was dead. She wanted to reach out to him but felt helpless because of reasons. Her reputation had been compromised by a few videos that she had no hand in. Talk about a violation of privacy. Too bad she couldn’t leave it all behind and live like a hermit the rest of her life on top of Ferncliff.

  After an exhausting hike, Ricki went through the drive-through to get a plain hamburger for Rumpus and stopped off at The Bean to get a cappuccino for herself. While Rumpus noshed on his hamburger in the car, she ran inside. At this time of day, it was usually busy with creatives and business folks using the free wi-fi, not to mention a few high school seniors taking a skip-day. As she stood in line, engrossed in the indie music coming from the speakers, someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and found Steve, her detective man-crush, hovering over her, looking as handsome as ever.

  “You’re just the person I wanted to see. Can we go somewhere and talk privately?” The tone of his voice was all business, not surprising since he looked to be still on duty. “Just want to ask a few questions.”

  “Sure. We can talk outside.”

  “Go ahead and get your coffee. I’ll meet you out there.”

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what this was all about. Because of Ricki’s run-in with Kari, she was certain the police would have a lot of questions for her. Naturally, she would help the police out in every way. She was a law-abiding citizen, after all, but she also wanted to start her own investigation. Steve was pretty cool when it came to that stuff. They scratched each other’s back during the Jennifer Barnes incident, so maybe they could scratch each other’s back this time.

  Steve leaned against his car, sipping coffee from a travel mug. Rumpus barked when he saw Ricki walking through the parking lot. “We can sit in the car and talk,” he said, opening the driver’s side door for her. “More privacy in here.”

  Ricki had never sat in a police car before, even an unmarked one like this one. Unmarked or not, it made her uncomfortable, like she wanted to confess to everything she ever did in life, guilty or not. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

  “Martin Houck is your ex-boyfriend, am I right?”

  “That is correct. How is he?”

  “He’s pretty shook up. I heard you knew the deceased.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I had a dinner meeting with her on Saturday night but to say I knew her is a bit of a stretch.”

  Steve pulled out a small notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped through the pages. “There’s a rumor going around that the two of you had a fight in the parking lot of Hilltop Inn.”

  It wasn’t exactly a rumor because most rumors only had a modicum of truth to them. In this case, there was video evidence of the fight, leaving no room for rumors to exist. But she wasn’t about to mention it as she was certain he had already seen the video in question.

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “That’s because it didn’t sound like a question.” It didn’t look like Steve was in the mood for her sarcasm. “We may have had a disagreement.”

  “Would you care to tell me what it was about?”

  Not really, she thought. She was a private person at the best of times and to share intimate details, painful ones at that, with a homicide detective didn’t make her want to open up and spill everything. “If you really want to know, she pushed my buttons. It was supposed to be a business meeting of sorts, but she had something else in mind. She wanted to talk about Marty, and all I wanted to do was escape. Which I did, by the way, but she followed me out into the parking lot.” And, of course, Steve was writing all of this down, making Ricki feel like she had done something wrong.

  “Is that when you had the fight?”

  Ricki cringed when she remembered the scene in the restaurant. “Uh, no. We raised, or I, raised my voice at the table.” She paused. “Before storming out.”

  “And what time would you say
this was?”

  “The reservations were for nine o’clock. I got there about five minutes before and waited for Kari to show up. Once she did, we probably sat there for what felt like forever for me before I got up to leave. It might have been, I don’t know, five minutes. She then followed me into the parking lot where the argument picked up. Time was irrelevant at that point.”

  “Did you go straight home?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t thinking of anything else but going to bed.”

  “What time?”

  “I didn’t pay attention to the time. Sorry.”

  Steve scribbled madly in his notebook. “Did you see anyone lurking about in the parking lot, anyone suspicious?”

  Did he mean anyone other than the person who shot the video? “No one other than the diners at the restaurant.”

  Steve nodded his head. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

  Now, she had known Steve for quite a long time, and for him to ask her these questions with that tone of voice, was offensive. She found herself getting angry. He wasn’t so good-looking now. “I can’t think of anything else.”

  “If you’re hiding anything, I’m going to find out what it is.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “A certain person’s ex comes back to his hometown with his hot fiancée and within days her body is found floating in a lake. It just so happens that this certain person had dinner with the deceased on the night she died. You tell me where the joke is in that?”

  Ricki sat stunned, unable to speak. She might have released a sharp breath of air that might have sounded like she was disgusted with Steve thinking she would murder anyone. She had never even been in a fight and covered her eyes during scary movies, if she watched them.

  “I’m keeping my eye on you.”

  Ricki wanted to slam the door when she got out of the car, but she didn’t want to get herself into any more trouble with Steve. Although she was certain there wasn’t a law against slamming car doors of official vehicles, she didn’t want to take any chances.

  Rumpus whimpered. She felt like doing the same. How could anyone think she’d hurt Kari? Steve of all people. She thought he was a friend. He made it sound like she was the jealous, out of control ex. The video of the fight didn’t help. And to think she was hoping to pick his brain to start her own investigation. That might be harder to do now that she was being watched.