Deadly Cost of Goods Read online

  Deadly Cost of Goods

  Second Treasures Mysteries

  Vol. 5

  by

  Margaret Evans

  Moonlight Mystery Press

  Maryland, U.S.A.

  Deadly Cost of Goods

  Volume Five of the Second Treasures Mysteries

  Print Edition, © November 2019, Margaret Evans

  Moonlight Mystery Press

  ISBN: 978-0-9789076-6-2

  Kindle Edition, © June 2020, Margaret Evans

  Moonlight Mystery Press

  Cover artwork copyright ©2019 Duncan Reid

  Production by Dennis Tuttle, 5editorial, Silver Spring, Md.

  Composition Design by Jenine Zimmers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  For more information about this book, contact:

  Moonlight Mystery Press

  www.moonlightmysterypress.com

  Dedication

  When my first grandchild was born, I was welcomed into the “best club in the world.” I learned how true that is. Babies are always the lights of your lives, but as they develop into personalities, the lights grow brighter, every year. This book is dedicated to my awesome, very much loved granddaughters, just because.

  Other Works by Margaret Evans

  Fiction

  Maya Earth Trilogy

  The Sixth World

  Trial in Jade: The Mayan Return

  Kingdom Come: The Mayan Answer

  The Lethal Limit

  Hostages to Murder

  The Mandrell Dagger

  Canvas of Deceit

  The Tao of Murder

  The Secret of Kenning Hall

  Code of Treachery

  The Harmony of Revenge (coming soon!)

  Non-Fiction

  Prairie Attack

  Lingerie Ward

  The Alphabet

  Saying Goodbye to Matt

  Lucky Day, Lucky Life

  Making the Next Green Light

  Poetry

  Christmas Poems for My Grown-up Children

  (includes “Golden Snowflakes” and “The Forgotten Snow Girl”)

  Ode to Lorelei © 2019

  To Kaitlin, Julia, Callista, and Elizabeth

  Prologue

  Near midnight, a large, gray cat slunk across the wide expanse of roof on the Old Library on Route 4 just outside the town of Raging Ford, Minnesota. It slowed, purposefully sliding one paw in front of the other, its head lowered as if stalking an unsuspecting bird or mouse. As it reached the A-frame peak of the first set of skylights near the rear of the building, it stopped and peered through the windows into the enormous cavern of the library’s central interior.

  The cat took a moment to glance up at the moon. The glow turned its eyes iridescent for a second until the feline took a final gaze into the depths of the library.

  Turning away and heading toward the roof’s edge on the south side of the huge building, the cat trotted, unafraid, to the very edge and looked down. All it saw was a downspout, one of five along each side of the structure, designed to carry away the melting snowfalls and prevent a roof collapse. Old, rusting fire escapes had been removed decades earlier when they were considered a danger for the more adventurous of the town’s youth.

  Despite the fact that the Old Library was boarded up and no longer in use, something about what the cat had seen caused it to shake its tail back and forth several times, stop a minute and repeat the shaking before curving it into an ess shape. Then it leaped off the tall building and vanished into the night.

  Chapter 1

  I SEE THE ERROR OF MY WAYS.

  Sergeant Connor Fitzpatrick was staring at the sign on the front of Laura Keene’s refrigerator as he leaned in the doorway to the kitchenette. He glanced over at her as she worked her daily miracle with the French press and Gevalia’s French roast, freshly ground coffee beans.

  “Does this mean you’ll listen to me now and then?”

  She looked up, saw him pointing at the sign.

  “Oh, that. No, it means I’m done with helping to organize and carry out the town’s parades and holiday celebrations. I’ve decided that Rina has the best skill set for those jobs.”

  His eyes crinkled a bit, remembering Rina Holm, the person with the most neurotic obsessive-compulsive disorder in the whole town of Raging Ford. She nearly drove Laura crazy with checklists and rigid schedules during the planning of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Gala in March, an event affectionately known as the SPDP&G.

  “I thought you were dragged onto the committee for the exciting events of Founder’s Day and the Fourth of July.”

  “Oh, well, after that. And thank goodness I don’t have to help with any of the rest of Heritage Week’s activities—just the dunk tank. I’m really glad this town plans a resting day after every big gala.”

  “What about Labor Day and the Halloween Haunted Woods?”

  “And after that, I’m done.”

  “So what does the sign really mean?”

  “It means I finally see the value of Rina’s organizational skills.”

  He waited for her to finish pouring the fresh coffee into a thermos for him. Once she added the necessary sugar and cream, jammed the stopper on tightly and screwed on the handled cup, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The thermos was still gripped in one of her hands.

  He caught it when she almost dropped it.

  “You’re good. Just like you caught me when we were practicing twirls and dips for the prom and I missed the cue.”

  He looked inward a moment before catching her eye.

  “The prom was fun, and I hope I will always catch you, but it’s in my job description that I kind of have to be aware of all things at all times.”

  “Like this?”

  She reached her face up for another good morning kiss, the memory of which was designed to remain with him throughout the day. She knew he couldn’t stop by on his way to work every day but did so whenever possible.

  He held her tightly with one arm, the thermos with the other, and then peeked over her head at the wall clock next to the back door to the Second Treasures thrift shop.

  “That’s a really weird clock.”

  “It kind of gets your attention.”

  Each number was a different contortion of the Minnesota state bird, the loon. Every one or couple of them looked exactly like the number it was supposed to be, but it did stop a person now and then, just to check…two wings, two legs, and just one beak per bird. Mostly, people clicked on their smart phones to check the time, but in this case, Connor’s hands and arms were busy.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Estate sale. I haven’t been able to part with it yet.”

  On his way through the storage and workroom behind Laura’s thrift shop, he paused with her hand in his, as he often did, in front of the Paris dream basket, ignoring the others. Then he continued to the back door and turned to kiss her one more time, as if the first two needed some continuity and he wasn’t sure he was quite done yet.

  “Gotta run. What are you up to today?” he asked, finally turning the knob.

  “I have to redo the shop, since Easter and spring are done, and I have to stock up for Founders
’ Day and Independence Day. Hey, do you know if anyone has ever done a booklet for Founders’ Day? I’m thinking a brief history of the town that we could give out or sell cheap. Maybe it should be aimed at the entire Heritage Days Festival and include a list of some of the countries our ancestors are from.”

  “I’m not aware of anybody doing one, but it sounds like a great idea. For Memorial Day, you could find obituaries on veterans from this town. Smedley & Smedley can help you with that or Charlie Kovacs and his newspaper archives. Harry Kovacs could probably tell you who’s still around, like Jack Flynn.”

  Smedley & Smedley was the original mortuary for the town of Raging Ford since the early 1870s when the town was being built. The founder, Amos Smedley, right down to the current owner, Andrew Smedley, and all the Smedleys in between, prided themselves on their accurate, detailed, and complete records for every deceased individual in the town who passed through their doors, including a few who hadn’t but should have. Those records included copies of signed death certificates, some of which also had photographs of the dearly departed. Andrew had personally scanned and stored all of the records in the Cloud and on memory sticks stored in safe deposit boxes in more than one bank in anticipation of a fire or devastation that might arrive in the wake of the changing world climate.

  Laura had already availed herself of some of these records in her search for any living descendants of two of Raging Ford’s founders, Aldous Munley and Quinn Dowell. She had found the information useful, especially what she discovered about the virtual disappearance of descendants of the third town founder and her ancestor, Samuel Rage. She was the last Rage on Earth as far as she could tell, but the case might not be the same for descendants of the other two founders. There was a lot to consider about why that was, and that so many deaths and unexplained disappearances occurred in her family line but not the other two. It seemed more than superficially suspicious. She was certain there were some descendants of the other two founders in Raging Ford or nearby towns with changed names and tried not to think that she herself might be a target.

  If she was right, that meant there was a diabolical conspiracy that had gone on for over a hundred years. Whether from jealousy or greed or just plain dislike of Samuel Rage was anyone’s guess at this point. Rage owned the lion’s share of the iron ore mine in the Mesabi Range and most of the town’s land, as well, and his subsequent pulling rank on his two partners for major decisions was the cause of dislike among the three men, but a conspiracy? No one knew for sure if it existed at all.

  “Yes, they can. And I’ll check with Harry. I was thinking of a coloring book for the younger ones and a more grownup booklet for the teens and adults. I’ll include Jack.”

  Jack Flynn ran the Communications Center for the Raging Ford Police Department. He was a civilian employee who had been the quarterback on Connor’s high school football team. During his last of multiple tours-of-duty in the Middle East, he lost one of his lower legs to an IED. Flynn had married his high school sweetheart, Sabina Morello, who was bank manager at Raging Ford Bank & Trust, in the spring.

  “Again, an excellent idea. Do you have to order much stuff for the shelves?”

  “Nope, got it all here already with more coming in tomorrow. I can start pricing, inventorying, and filling the shelves. But before that, I have to run over to Peter Fulton’s house.”

  Connor, halfway out the door, took on a thoughtful look.

  “Didn’t old Mr. Fulton pass away recently?”

  “Yes, Oscar died about three months ago. His son Peter is trying to clear out the house and sell it.”

  “Another estate sale? Well, thankfully, it’s not out on some remote country road without cell phone towers.”

  Laura stifled a smile, remembering past unfortunate events including her and Connor when they drove long distances into unincorporated, rural areas to pick up estate sales goods.

  “Peter told me his father used to work in the Old Library on Route 4. Did you know that?”

  “I remember hearing that from someone. Is his work history related to anything you’re buying from his estate?”

  She nodded.

  “He has several boxes of old books from the time when they were moving everything to the New Library. These were duplicates or ones that didn’t make the cut.”

  “Anyone helping you?”

  “Erica will be on break shortly and promised to come with me.”

  “Within the hour?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll try to check in at the station and meet you there. Those older hard-bound books can be pretty heavy.”

  “Thanks, Connor. And if you can’t make it, that’s okay. We have a hand truck.”

  With that, he was in his police SUV and waving good-bye.

  Laura returned to the kitchenette behind the shop, smiling from the encounter with her boyfriend and a million other things on her mind for the day. She was shocked from her reverie when she saw her laptop open on the table where she had left it closed.

  Empress Isabella, a most mysterious cat, sat proudly next to it, back arched and tail wrapped around her front paws. The feline was gazing at the computer screen that displayed a full color, historical picture of Raging Ford’s Old Library in its heyday.

  It was not the library that caught Laura up short.

  It was wondering how the cat had done it.

  Chapter 2

  “Another Keller Pils here!” the patron called out to the table server in the saloon called Mercy Tavern.

  The bar was an often crowded hole-in-the-wall, roughly halfway between Raging Ford and Eagle Junction, and squashed between a Laundromat and a pawn shop. It was located in one of the original strip malls off an “improved” rural route with stop signs on most of its side roads and a speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour that few observed. Speeding tickets were no deterrent; license points and suspensions just meant the newly non-licensed drivers climbed into another vehicle belonging to someone else who still had an active license and not too many tickets for a free ride.

  The Laundromat served some of the small homes in the area as well as residents in the medium-sized apartment building farther down the road. The second “A” in its name blinked off and on continuously. Nobody ever saw the owners or managers to beg them to fix the annoyance. There was a posted phone number to call if a washer or a dryer didn’t work, but it was just a number to leave a message and nobody ever saw anything being fixed there, either.

  The pawn shop’s name was not lit, but it sported three peeling, gold-painted balls above the entrance. It was a known fact in these unincorporated parts that if you entered the pawn shop for any reason, you would have to listen to the owner claiming the Saint Nicholas story as the reason for the three gold balls over the entrance to every pawn shop in the country, if not the world. As most folks in Minnesota knew, Saint Nicholas was the patron saint of pawn shops and the three gold balls represented the three gold coins the saint had given to a poor man so his three daughters could get married. All other far more solid historical tales of connection between the gold balls and the Medici family or the district of Lombardy in Italy were swept behind the glass case of shiny watches and sparkling rings of equally questionable value.

  The tavern itself was a draw to any resident or passerby in need of thirst quenching, whether it was ten in the morning or ten at night, and regardless of the temperature or season. It offered a surprisingly large variety of very good ales and lagers, most of which were brewed right there in Minnesota. The lager for which this particular customer was asking was a variety called a Pilsner, a little lighter than other lagers, but very popular among the more expert judges of beers.

  Country western music blared from ceiling speakers, obscuring conversations at nearby tables, and necessitating everyone raising their voices just to be heard over the music, laughter, and arguments. The service was great, and people came here to relax, enjoy the evening or the day, complain about their bosses or puny paychecks, or to
discuss business propositions.

  As the server brought the requested Pilsner to this customer, she collected her drink charge and left the three men to have their discussion. They ramped it up with laughter, a cover so that their real purposes drew no attention beyond their simply being patrons enjoying part of their day together.

  “This is good stuff,” the customer who had ordered the lager remarked, a slight foam mustache above his upper lip that he wiped off with the back of his hand.

  “Enjoy it. We’re not coming back here,” his companion stated, tugging on his red, wrinkled, and soiled Twins’ baseball cap, its bill coming undone from the cap in one corner.

  “Yeah, I know,” the first man returned. “But this sure is good. And made in the U.S. of A. Can’t beat that.”

  “I prefer a Porter, smooth and dark,” the third man commented.

  “You mean like you?” the first man tossed back.

  “Well, I have a girl friend who says I am.”

  Just then a police officer entered the bar. No one looked up, and they all kept to their own business and left the officer to his, which included a brief chat with the woman behind the register. They both smiled, waved to each other, and the officer left the bar a few minutes later after a quick scan of the patrons. They had no idea he had already checked them thoroughly from a corner of the front window before he entered.

  Over the edge of his mug, the Pilsner drinker glanced at the cop’s back in the doorway as the officer left the bar. He pulled on his lager again before setting it down but said nothing.

  “Okay, you two,” the second man with the red cap said. “I’ll do my best to find another place just as good next time we want to celebrate our project. It’s going well and we deserve time off now and then.”