Curl Up and Die Read online

  As she opened her laptop, she heard Mia pull up on her bike and let it crash to the ground.

  “Here kitty,” she heard Mia call. “Don’t be frightened. It’s okay.”

  Oh, no. Mia was befriending another stray. Molly didn’t have the heart to tell her that the truck lot—or, rather, the customers dropping food—attracted a lot of cats. Mice too. And it was one of the arguments Corsello would leverage against them in her proposal to the city.

  Molly took two steps down to the front and picked up Mia’s sunshine yellow bike, expecting her to return any second with a dirty but furry and lovable creature she would just have to save. Instead, a blood curdling scream sounded from behind the van.

  “Mia!” Molly screamed back. She threw the bike down and tore around the van, skirt riding high on her thighs once again. “I’m coming, baby!” Not that Mia was a baby, far from it, but the mama bear rose up in Molly something fierce. As Mia’s life flashed before Molly’s eyes, she had a fleeting thought: whoever says an aunt’s love isn’t as strong as a mother’s doesn’t know what they are talking about.

  Molly rounded the van, and there stood Mia, her long buttercup-blond hair hanging around her stunned face. From her hands dangled one of Glam Van’s tire chocks meant to be a safety measure, covered in what Molly was certain was blood. At Mia’s feet was a motionless woman with chestnut hair, stained with blood. And she was wearing a pair of pink ostrich-skin boots.

  Chapter Two

  Mia froze. She had never seen a dead body before, not a real one. Her mother had played a body once, on that terrible soap-opera job she’d taken when Mia was seven or eight. Mia had visited her on the set, and they’d eaten lunch together, Lacy in her full dead-woman makeup. She’d picked at a salad with blue fingers, her pretty blue eyes circled with bruising and fake blood dripping from a slash across her throat. Mia had eaten nothing, horrified by the bloody vision across the table and terrified by the realization that her own mother would someday die. After that, she’d refused to visit her mother on set again.

  But this body was real, lying beside Glam Van. Lacy had played a doctor once and rehearsed her lines on Mia. “No pulse. I’m calling it,” Lacy had said. And unless more than one person owned a pair of pink ostrich boots, Mia knew the person.

  As Mia crouched to inspect, two round eyes stared at her from beneath Glam Van, the scraggly cat she’d been chasing. He licked his injured paw.

  “Poor kitty,” Mia whispered. “You must be so scared.” She felt pretty scared herself as she reached for the woman’s pale wrist, pushed aside the rose gold Patek Philippe watch, and felt for a pulse.

  Nothing. No pulse. I’m calling it.

  Mia dropped the wrist as if burned. The cat ran away.

  From the corner of her eye she could see a fan of chestnut hair splayed across the ground, the copper highlights now tinged a sickening red. Mia couldn’t bring herself to look at the face, but she took in the woman’s pink tank, the distressed pink camouflage jeans, and the boots—those horrible ostrich boots. Yes, it was definitely Veronica Corsello.

  Mia stood, taking the bloody chocks with her.

  Aunt Molly yelled her name. She’d recognize her voice anywhere.

  Mia turned to watch her aunt round the corner and screech to a halt.

  “What have you done?”

  Mia’s brain kicked into gear. She looked at the bloody chocks in her hand and the body of Veronica Corsello laying at her feet. “I … the cat.” She took a breath. “I was trying to catch the cat; it was hurt. I saw the boots, and I thought she was doing something to our Glam Van. Sabotaging it or something. I ran over to yell at her but she …” Mia looked at the body.

  “Is she dead?” Aunt Molly asked.

  Mia nodded. “And now the poor cat is terrified and ran away before I could help him.”

  “The cat?” Aunt Molly rolled her eyes. “Never mind the darn cat. Don’t touch anything else. I’ll call 9-1-1. We need the police.”

  She dropped the chocks. “What?” The police. Mia scurried away from Veronica’s body. Surely her aunt didn’t think she could be blamed … A terrible thought struck her. She’d spoken to Veronica just two days earlier. Well, not so much spoken to as shouted at her. There’d been witnesses, lots of witnesses. And now she’d been the one to find her body. Her mother had never played a detective, so Mia didn’t know much about how real police procedures worked, but she did know that this couldn’t look good.

  Aunt Molly returned and draped a lavender-colored hairdressing cape over Veronica. She wrapped a protective arm around Mia’s shoulder and pulled her close. Mia had never been so grateful.

  “I think you’re in shock. Let’s get you inside,” Aunt Molly said. “The police are on the way.”

  As Aunt Molly pulled her away from the scene, another terrible thought popped into Mia’s head: It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

  She pushed the thought aside, because no living creature deserved to die, not even a creature as horrible as Veronica Corsello.

  Mia realized she had zoned out when Detective Liam Moat—or Mean Goat, as Mia called him—crouched in front of her so that his superhero blue eyes were on a level with hers.

  “Miss Casey,” Detective Mean Goat said, his voice attempting to wrap around her like the Pacific Ocean mist. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  She must be in shock because, instead of thinking about Veronica Corsello’s head, she was wondering how much older Mean Goat was than her. Five years? Ten years? Had he always known he’d wanted to be in law enforcement, because he seemed successful for his age. All the more reason to dislike him. She was twenty-one and still not sure what she wanted to be when she grew up.

  She’d given him the nickname Mean Goat a few months before, at January’s Women’s March, after his totally unjustified comment about her boyfriend, Damion. Although she was learning that Damion could be a little secretive—too secretive, actually—Mean Goat was wrong to accuse Damion of being “shifty.”

  After that, she’d learned that Mean Goat wasn’t the only nickname Detective Liam Moat had around San Cosmas. The old dears at Silver Linings Assisted Living, where her Aunt Molly colored and set hair every week in the resident salon, called him Detective Dreamboat. Mia always rolled her eyes when she heard the misnomer. Okay, sure, Liam Moat was easy on the eyes, and she’d have to be dead not to notice how his chest practically rippled under those pale blue shirts he buttoned all the way up to his Adam’s apple. But Liam Moat was like a cardboard cutout of a man: straight, two-dimensional, and about as interesting as a Tuesday afternoon at the DMV. Not to mention, he was mean. And to Mia, skin-deep attraction wasn’t enough. The insides counted too.

  She repeated her story to Detective Mean Goat, how she’d ridden her bike to Glam Van because she didn’t want to contribute to global warming by driving, and how she’d seen the thin little cat that looked as if it was starving and hurt and chased it behind Glam Van. She didn’t mention that she’d stopped off to see Damion at work. It didn’t seem important just yet.

  “And that’s where you found Miss Corsello,” Mean Goat said.

  Mia nodded. She found it funny that he called the woman “Miss” Corsello when Veronica had been married at least twice, as far as Mia knew. It was amazing what some men found attractive.

  “How did you know it was her?” Mean Goat asked.

  “Those,” said Mia, pointing at Veronica’s feet.

  Mean Goat raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Her boots? You were familiar with Miss Corsello’s wardrobe?”

  “Pink ostrich. Hard to forget once you’ve seen them.”

  “Had you met Miss Corsello before?”

  Mia tried to look innocent. “A couple of times.”

  “Under what circumstances had you met?”

  Mia blanched, all innocence gone. “Outside her office.”

  “At a protest?”

  Either he knew more than he was letting on, or he was a good guesser.
“I think so. Yes.”

  “And did you and Miss Corsello speak?”

  Mia twisted her lips, trying to decide how best to answer this without making herself look worse, but the way Detective Mean Goat looked at her made her think he’d already heard this story before, no doubt straight from Veronica Corsello’s horse mouth. No offense to horses.

  “It was a protest against big game hunting,” she said, suddenly angry that she was being accused when Veronica Corsello had been the real problem. “You saw those photos, right? We were marching outside her offices and she comes storming out and tells us all to go get jobs and do something productive. I yelled something at her.”

  “And what did you yell, exactly?”

  “I don’t remember. Exactly.”

  Detective Moat flipped back through his notebook, through quite a few pages. “According to a complaint filed by Miss Corsello, you told her the world would be better off without people like her in it. Sound familiar now?”

  Mia bit her lip. Yup, that sounded just about right, but now that the world no longer had Veronica Corsello in it, Mia could see that her comment had been a bit harsh. “It’s out of context.”

  Behind her, Mia heard her aunt sigh as if the weight of the entire world and their cats and dogs had landed on her shoulders and she was expected to carry them all. Yes, the comment definitely sounded harsh out of context.

  “Am I in trouble?” Mia asked, because it was certainly starting to feel that way.

  Detective Moat snapped his notebook shut. “Not yet,” he said, then, glancing over at Aunt Molly, added, “At least not with me.”

  Molly was certain about three things.

  First, Mia wasn’t a murderer, not even of a Mother Earthhating nightmare like Veronica Corsello. Mia may have a sharp tongue and strong opinions sometimes, but she couldn’t even harm a tick—she’d probably return the blood sucker to the forest first.

  Second, she finally understood why Mia had added No ostrich boots to the Glam Van Rules, which, crapola, led her to what she knew for sure with number three: Detective Moat must not see the sign sitting outside because if he did, Mia’s ostrich-boots shout-out made Mia look even more suspect than just the bloody chocks dangling from her hand earlier.

  Who knew inviting my niece to work in my van could be so detrimental for the young woman’s future? Molly could imagine her sister Lacy now, being a drama mama in court: “Molly ruined my daughter. This is all Molly’s fault.”

  Molly would rather curl up and die than put her niece in harm’s way. Yet she had. Oh, sugar plums and dancing fairies. This is all starting to look really, really bad.

  Detective Moat was staring at her over Mia’s shoulder. Feeling like a failure of an aunt, Molly looked away. She glanced at her watch. Nell would be here any minute for her appointment—unless the news was already out. Because then all of Molly’s clients, especially politicians, would avoid her like the plague. No one liked to be in the proximity of death, much less murder.

  No matter what, the detective needed to leave without seeing the chalkboard sign. Last thing Molly wanted to see was a police officer placing one of those plastic numbered triangles in front of the A-framed sign as incriminating Evidence Item 10 and then taking a picture to be used in a murder trial.

  Oh jeez. She was really becoming a bit dramatic herself. She was usually much more practical and solution-oriented. Focus. What can I do to protect Mia?

  Across the van and through the door, Molly spotted the county coroner wheeling the gurney holding Veronica Corsello’s body to his van. She stepped up to her door and looked to the side. Yellow caution tape was spread between her Glam Van and Asil’s Turkish Delights truck so no one could access the crime area.

  “Detective Moat,” Molly said, “our first customer will be here shortly and I’m not sure what I should do about my clients today. We want to cooperate and be helpful, of course.” Except for that sign. She didn’t want to help him with that.

  He nodded. “If you’re not too upset, you can be open for business. A guard will stop anyone from accessing the crime site. So, it’s up to you and your clients. I just have a few more questions now, and then you’ll both need to come down to the station later to file a formal statement.”

  Dougie was going to have a conniption when she told him that his wife and niece needed to go to the San Cosmas PD to be questioned. The urgency sounded so guilty. It would be one thing to tell Doug they were providing useful information, but another to tell him that Mia’s DNA would be on the supposed weapon. She needed to get this pushed to tomorrow, if only to stop Doug from worrying too much.

  “I have a meeting with the truck owners tonight. Can it wait until after that, or can we come in the morning?” If she wasn’t so worried about Mia and the Van Clan—snickerdoodle swears—she’d have never pushed back on a detective.

  Moat looked at her long and hard. She guessed he was sizing her up: was she someone who would do anything to protect her livelihood or her niece?

  Molly actively tried not to fidget. She would do a lot for Mia, but not up to murder or covering up a murder.

  “My niece has nothing to do with this, Detective Moat.” Molly stared hard at him. “You’re on my husband Doug Locks’s softball team, or, err, Goldie Locks is his nickname.” Shoot, now she was just babbling like a guilty fool.

  He must have decided he could trust her because he nodded. “Tomorrow morning is fine. By then we should have the autopsy done, and the questions and next steps will depend on the sequence of events.”

  Meaning if Veronica had been killed in the past several hours, Mia wouldn’t have an alibi because between dinner last night and finding the body, Mia had been alone, sleeping in Molly and Doug’s backyard studio apartment less than a thirty-foot walk to their house. Unless Mia’s beau Damion was there too; then she would have an alibi.

  Molly and Doug were trying to give Mia some privacy and growing room, but while they had never said “no men allowed” in Mia’s apartment, Molly also wasn’t sure how far Mia’s relationship had progressed with Damion or if Mia would be comfortable admitting she was sleeping with him.

  And truth be told, Molly wondered, was she ready to find out if Mia was intimate with someone? Might even be TMI. Seriously. She felt like a mom must feel, watching a girl become a woman, wondering how it had happened so fast.

  Detective Moat interrupted her thoughts. “But be prepared to do a DNA swab. Both of you.”

  “Both of us? Why?” Molly asked. Why in the heck did he need her DNA?

  “Mia for obvious reasons, and you because you touched the hairdressing gown covering the body. In fact, if anyone else could have touched the gown, I need to know who they would be.”

  Oh, fudge brownies with nuts. That damn gown. She’d thought she was doing the right thing covering the body with the gown and protecting innocent bystanders from the horror. Turns out, she had tampered with evidence. All those crime shows she and Doug had watched hadn’t been much help after all. It was much easier to shout advice at the TV and warn the actresses what not to do than respond appropriately on the spot. “No, only me. I wash them every night.”

  Moat nodded his approval. “One more thing. When you arrived this morning, did you see anyone else in the lot?”

  Molly’s thoughts leapt to Asil. Moat had been at Opal May’s funeral, so he knew most of the truckies were there. Had he noticed Asil missing? It didn’t seem fair to throw Asil under the bus for waiting for his roaster, at least not without talking to him herself first. Besides, she had only smelled his kebabs. She hadn’t actually seen him.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” she said.

  “And the last time you saw the chocks, where were they?” he asked.

  “Behind the rear tires like they should be,” Molly said.

  “When was that?”

  Molly shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t say for sure. Glam Van hasn’t moved—”

  He interrupted. “And this morning when you arrived?”


  Molly choked on her own response. “I didn’t check.” She’d grown complacent and lazy. Too comfortable. Shame on her.

  “Can you think of any reason why Veronica Corsello would have been at the lot and your van?”

  Molly wasn’t going to fall for his same trick. She’d already listened as he backed Mia into a corner when he knew perfectly well that Mia had confronted Veronica and knew exactly what Mia had said. Of course he would know—and if he didn’t, he was a lousy detective—that Veronica Corsello had been angling to buy the lot from Opal May and evict the truck owners. And she had been a victor this past week, gaining Max’s verbal offer. Still, Molly couldn’t think of a single good reason why Veronica Corsello would be anywhere near Glam Van, especially when she must have known most everyone would be at Opal May’s funeral.

  But Molly didn’t need to reply, because some of Mia’s shock must have worn off and she muttered, “You’re the detective. You tell us.”

  “Mia …” Molly feigned shock. You go, girl.

  Moat just smiled and shut his notepad and rolled his broad shoulders back. “You’re right, Miss Casey. I am the detective. And I always get my man.” He gave Mia what Molly was sure was a provocative look, and added, “Or woman.”

  Oh, my. Wait just a hot minute. That sounded less like a threat and more like flirting. Molly could practically feel the sizzle between Moat and Mia. Er, at least from Moat to Mia. Mia wasn’t having any of it.

  The detective had transferred from San Francisco less than a year ago. Molly’s assisted- living clients called him a dreamboat and had compared Liam Moat’s looks to Captain America, and her husband had even admitted that he had a man crush on Detective Moat. “Who wouldn’t have a crush on Captain America?” he’d joked.