Chocolate Heart Killer: A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 14 Read online

  She shook her head. “No, you have to buy a basic plan, and then depending on what you’re looking for in a personal trainer, there’s another fee added to that.”

  “Are you serious?” Christy asked, glancing at the paper. “That turns into a pretty hefty fee then.”

  “Oh no, when you consider how much it costs to eat out several times a week, this is a bargain,” the woman assured her. “Most people eat out far more often than they realize, and if you just cut back a couple of times a week, you’ll have your gym membership paid for.”

  “You know, we’d really just like to speak with Mariah.” I was trying to be as smiling and happy as she was, in the hopes she would just let us see Mariah, but I didn’t have any intention of joining the gym. I glanced over at the weight room and saw that most of the machines were occupied. Since it was January, I supposed they had a lot of new sign-ups this month. I wasn’t going to be one of them. Christy might have had a point about me being allergic to exercise.

  “I can get the two of you in for a special price. Buy one, get one half off. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds like we just want to talk to Mariah,” Christy said evenly. “Can we do that? Honestly, we didn’t come here to join the gym.”

  The perky blond frowned. “But, you have to be a member of the gym to see a personal trainer.”

  “We’re just going to talk to her, not work out with her,” Christy assured her. “Please, just point us in the right direction and we’ll head over there.”

  She shook her head and tried to come up with another reason why we couldn’t do that when I caught sight of Mariah heading to the bank of offices along one wall. “That’s okay, thanks for your help,” I said and grabbed Christy by the hand, and we hurried in that direction.

  “Wait a minute, you can’t just go inside the gym,” the woman said. We ignored her and kept going.

  “Mariah,” I called when we were closer.

  She turned and looked at us, smiling when she recognized us. “Hi Christy, hi Mia,” she said. “Are you two thinking about joining the gym?”

  Everyone wanted us to join the gym. Were they trying to give us a hint? I shook my head. “No, we just wanted to stop in and see how you were doing. We were so sorry to hear about Logan,” I said quietly when we got to her.

  She frowned and nodded. “Would you like to come inside?” She indicated the nearest office.

  We nodded and followed her into the office, taking a seat in front of the desk.

  “I’m so sorry about Logan,” Christy added.

  She looked at both of us as her eyes teared up. “I still can’t believe it. This is my first day back to work since he died. I wasn’t doing myself any good staying at home and crying on the couch, so I decided I had better come to work. At least I won’t have to think about him all day. I’m trying to concentrate on my work.”

  Mariah was in her early thirties and was fit, as expected for a personal trainer. She wore a tank top and spandex exercise pants and I could tell she enjoyed using the weight machines here. “Mariah, do you have any idea what might have happened to Logan?” I asked gently.

  She looked at me a moment and then glanced at Christy. “Honestly? If I had to take a guess, I would say Amber Gleason killed him.”

  “Amber Gleason? Why would she kill him?” Christy asked.

  “Because she owns The Hair Affair Salon. She bought it recently. But she’s never liked Logan. She used to work over at Tangles and Bangs and she always resented that Logan had such a busy barbershop. She was always bad-mouthing him and trying to get his customers to come over to her shop.”

  “Do you think she had something against him? Would she really kill him?” I asked.

  She nodded. “She’s the only person that makes any sense as a possible killer. She was always telling people that Logan didn’t keep the shop clean. That the combs and razors he used were infested with lice. She warned people that if they went to his barbershop, they would come away with lice. Can you believe it?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Logan kept his shop immaculate. He always sterilized anything he used on more than one customer.”

  I nodded. “Our dad has been going there for years, and I know he wouldn’t go there if he thought there was anything unsanitary about the place.”

  She put her hands on the top of the desk. “It was disgusting the way she behaved. It was like she resented him for some reason. I’m not sure why.”

  “That’s odd that she behaved that way,” Christy said.

  “Mariah, how long had you and Logan been dating?” I asked.

  She sighed. “We were together for five years. Well, mostly together. We had some bumps in our relationship I guess, and occasionally we spent time apart. But it never lasted long, I think a month was the longest, if I remember right. We actually broke up at the beginning of December, but we were back together by Christmas. Honestly, this past month or so was the happiest we’d ever been together.” This time she did start crying, and she grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do this.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “It’s completely understandable. I’m so sorry that this happened to Logan. Ethan and he had been friends for years, and I know Ethan’s taking it hard, too.”

  She nodded. “Logan thought a lot of Ethan,” she said and smiled. “This whole thing is just such a shock.”

  I nodded. “So you really think that Amber might have had something to do with his death?”

  She sat back in her chair and sighed again. “If it wasn’t her, then I’m completely stumped. I can’t imagine anyone wanting him dead.”

  “What did Logan say about her spreading rumors about him around town?” Christy asked.

  She leaned forward over the desk. “He was angry about it. He went down there to her shop and told her he was going to hire a lawyer and sue her for defamation of character if she didn’t stop.”

  “Well, that might be a reason for murder,” Christy suggested.

  And it just might be, I thought. I didn’t know a lot about Amber, but I needed a trim, and I thought I might make an appointment and see how she was taking the news of Logan’s death. Would she be happy about it? Surprised? Or indifferent?

  Chapter Seven

  The more I thought about things, the more I knew I had to speak to Amber Gleason. Amber was a few years older than I was, and I was surprised to hear that she had bought The Hair Affair Salon. I’d been to her a couple of times to have my hair done, although not recently. It was just my luck that she had a cancellation and could fit me in the next day.

  I walked into her shop and let the door swing closed behind me. It was warm in the shop and it felt good to come in out of the cold. Although the sun had been shining for the past two days, it was still bitingly cold outside. I could hardly wait for spring. Well, make that late spring. The early spring would still bring snow around here.

  Amber looked up at me from the front desk. “Hi Mia,” she said, smiling. “You’re just in time. My last customer just left, and I’ve got a chair waiting for you.”

  I smiled and headed over to the chair she indicated. “I’m so glad you could get me in. It’s been ages since I had a trim and the split ends have been bugging me. I don’t know why I waited so long.”

  She came around to the chair as I took a seat and lifted up the ends of my hair. “Oh, you do have some split ends here. You’ve got to keep on top of the trims if you want healthy hair growth. What else are we going to do for you today?” Amber’s own chestnut hair was streaked with highlights and she wore it in a cute shoulder-length cut.

  “How about a deep conditioning? I haven’t had one of those in ages.”

  “Sounds good. What about highlights?” she asked, running her fingers through my hair. “We could do some really nice bright highlights for you." She looked at me in the mirror as she stood behind me.

  “I think I’m going to skip the highlights,” I said. My hair was a me
dium brown, and probably could have benefited from some highlights, but I had begun squirreling away a little money here and there for the upcoming wedding. We hadn’t set a date yet, but I didn’t want to go into debt over it. Highlights could wait until the wedding.

  She nodded. “Okay, sounds good,” she said brightly. “We’ll do a shampoo before the deep conditioning so it soaks in really well.”

  She turned the chair around and laid it back so that my hair was in the sink. “I’m so glad the sun has come out,” I said as she got to work.

  “You and me both,” she said as she turned on the water and began shampooing my hair. “I can’t stand when we go for days and days with an overcast sky. All those dark clouds wear on me. It’s depressing.”

  “I know what you mean. I feel the same way about it.” I looked up at the ceiling, preparing to bring up Logan. “It sure was a shame to hear about Logan Michaels.” I waited to see what she would say.

  We made eye contact for a moment and then she went back to washing my hair. “A shame? I suppose it was.”

  That didn’t sound convincing to me. “It’s just awful that he ended up dying the way he did.” I wasn’t sure if it was common knowledge that he had been murdered.

  She nodded and began humming. After a moment she stopped. “I heard someone murdered him.”

  “I heard the same thing,” I said casually. I clasped my hands together beneath the plastic apron she had draped across me.

  She nodded again and began humming and running water over my hair. “It’s always a shock when somebody is murdered. But then, sometimes it isn’t so much a shock. Not that it’s expected exactly, but it’s just not a shock, if that makes sense.”

  I glanced at her. “What do you mean by that? Not a shock?”

  She shrugged and continued rinsing the shampoo from my hair. “He was a terrible businessman. His shop was dirty and Beth Rogan’s husband picked up lice from his shop. Can you believe it?” Her eyes didn’t meet mine when she said it.

  I tried to catch her eye, but she was busy rinsing my hair. “Lice? That’s awful. Are you sure about that?”

  She nodded. “Sure am. Beth came in here so upset back in October, telling me about it. Her husband had gone there to get a haircut, and I’m guessing that Logan wasn’t sterilizing his combs and razors the way he should. Anybody would know that you can’t use something on more than one person’s hair without sterilizing it.” She made a clucking noise and shook her head. “Some people shouldn’t be in the hair business.”

  I wasn’t sure how she was connecting these two things. Was she trying to say someone killed him because they got lice from his shop? But I couldn’t believe it was true about the lice. Ethan wouldn’t have continued going to Logan’s shop if he hadn’t kept things clean.

  “What did Beth’s husband say about it? Did he say something to Logan?”

  She nodded. “Sure did. He was hot about it. And I don’t blame him one bit. He’s been coming to me ever since.”

  “What did Logan say when he confronted him about it?” I asked.

  “He denied it, of course. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Logan was just a very shady character in general, and I’m not at all surprised that he denied it. It was just laziness on his part. It’s not like it takes a lot of effort to keep things clean.”

  “What makes you think his murder had something to do with him not keeping his shop clean?” It didn’t make sense to me that she was linking the two.

  “I guess I don’t know that for sure,” she said, hesitating now. “I’m just saying, his reputation around here isn’t that great. But if it wasn’t one of his customers, then I think the person that might have killed him would have to be his girlfriend, Mariah.”

  Amber wasn’t making sense. First she was saying Logan’s death was because he wasn’t a good business person, now she was saying his girlfriend might have killed him. It made me suspicious. Was she trying to cover for something?

  “Why do you think Mariah killed him?” I asked.

  “Because the two fought like cats and dogs. Everyone knows that. They were on-again off-again more times than I can count. And Mariah, when she was off, she was off. I mean, she would go into a rage whenever someone brought Logan’s name up if it happened to be when they were split up.” She clucked again and shook her head. “That girl is something else.”

  I wondered if this was true. Certainly by now most people knew that their relationship hadn’t been stable, but would she kill him? “I didn’t know that about her.” I wondered if she would say something else.

  She nodded as she finished rinsing my hair. “I ran into her at the grocery store the last time they broke up. She wanted him to marry her, but he had no intention of doing that. They had been together for five or six years and she was on him all the time to get him to marry her, but he didn’t have any interest in marrying her for some reason. It made her so angry.”

  “I wonder why he wouldn’t marry her?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I really don’t have any idea about that. When I ran into her last December, she told me that she had wasted the last five years of her life because of him. She was so mad. I mean, her face was red, and she just went on and on about how he was a jerk and how he expected her to be there whenever he called, and yet when she wanted to be with him, sometimes he would say he was busy or that he didn’t want to see her. She said she felt like she was being used, and you know that kind of thing can wear on a person after a while.”

  I frowned as she squeezed the excess water out of my hair. “I can see where that would be upsetting. But why didn’t she leave him permanently, then? Why go back?”

  “I said the same thing to her, and she started crying right there in the cereal aisle and said that she loved him, and she couldn’t leave him. She said she couldn’t live without him.” She chuckled. “Some women have no backbone.”

  “Unfortunately, she has to live without him now. If she couldn’t live without him, why would she kill him?” I hadn’t realized that Mariah was so emotionally volatile.

  She chuckled. “Isn’t that the truth? But I figure she lost her temper and killed him in a fit of rage.”

  “But he died in his car. Someone cut the brake line. That isn’t a fit of rage. That’s planned.”

  She nodded. “Did you know that Mariah’s dad used to own the body shop in town?”

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  She nodded. “Mariah knows her way around a car as well as any man does. It wouldn’t have been a big deal for her to cut that brake line. I guess I don’t know for sure that she killed him, but I would be willing to bet that she did.”

  That was news to me. I hadn’t realized that her dad had owned the old body shop. It had closed down nearly ten years earlier. Mariah was fit and in shape, and it would have been easy for her to slip under that car and cut the brake line if she knew which line it was. And if her dad had taught her about cars, then she probably did. I was going to talk to Ethan about this.

  Chapter Eight

  I was putting fudge into the display case when the bell over the door rang and I looked up. Ethan walked into the shop and grinned at me.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” I said and closed the display case door. I went around the side of the front counter and gave him a quick kiss. We were the only people in the candy store, and I pulled him to me and held him tight. I looked up into his eyes. “Hey, you look tired.”

  He nodded. “I am tired.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. The look in his eyes was more than being tired and I wanted to know what was going on.

  “The chief thinks I might be a little too close to this case. He thinks I’m stressing myself out over finding his killer. But I owe it to Logan to give him the justice he deserves.”

  “Can you ask to be taken off the case?” I asked him.

  He gave me a puzzled look. “Why would I do that? I’m going to find Logan’s killer.”
/>   I nodded. “Of course you are, but it’s got to be hard investigating this case with the victim being a friend of yours.”

  He sighed and looked away. “It is. But it doesn’t matter. I will find whoever killed Logan and make sure they’re put away for a long time,” he said and walked over to the display case. “What I’ve been missing is your mother’s fudge. Is that raspberry white chocolate fudge I see there?”

  “Wait a minute. What you’ve been missing is my mother’s fudge?” I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him.

  He glanced at me and chuckled. “I’m sorry, let me rephrase that. I’ve been missing you so much. I also miss your mother’s fudge. But if I had to choose between the two, I would choose you over your mother’s fudge. And that has got to make you feel good, doesn’t it?”

  I shook my head and laughed. “Yes, it makes me feel wonderful.” I went behind the counter and opened up the display case. “Raspberry white chocolate fudge?” The raspberry fudge was proving to be a popular flavor.

  “Some of that Raspberry white chocolate fudge would make me the happiest man alive,” he said. Then he looked at me wide-eyed. “Let me rephrase that. Seeing you has made me the happiest man alive. The only thing that would make me just a teensy bit happier is if I could also have some of that raspberry fudge that your mother so lovingly makes.”

  I shook my head and pulled the tray of fudge from the display case. “You sure are buttering me up for some reason,” I said.

  “Only for some fudge,” he said, leaning on the front counter. “Hey, did you do something different with your hair?” He looked at me, tilting his head.

  I turned my head so he could get a better look at my hair. “You noticed. I went in to have my hair trimmed, but then Amber Gleason talked me into a deep conditioning and highlights.” I had given in to the highlighting. It had been so long since I had anything done with my hair. I was feeling guilty about it since I was trying to save that money for the wedding, but Amber had done a good job on my hair and I was pleased with the results.