Fan Mail
Fan Mail
Local celebrity news anchor Gloria Morning is used to receiving declarations of love and praise in her weekly fan letters, but when a Lake Tahoe doctor is murdered and she gets an anonymous note telling her it was done for her glory, her appreciation turns to panic. Unsure of where else to turn, she enlists the help of novice private investigator Aspen Adams. No sooner does Aspen begin digging into who sent the macabre note than another murder occurs, followed by another note, and she soon realizes she’s up against a ruthless and deranged killer.
Working with scant clues and a puzzling array of potential suspects, Aspen is determined to unearth the elusive connection between the victims and her client. But as the body count grows and the murderer remains a mystery to both her and the police, Aspen discovers she’s gotten closer to the killer than she ever imagined, and now she must risk everything she holds dear to stop the killings, including her own life . . .
Title Page
Copyright
Fan Mail
Daryl Wood Gerber
Copyright © 2019 by Daryl Wood Gerber
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
www.beyondthepagepub.com
ISBN: 978-1-950461-28-8
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Contents
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Books by Daryl Wood Gerber
About the Author
Chapter 1
Midafternoon traffic was creeping along. Everyone on the road was edgy, thanks to the blistering heat. As I turned up the air-conditioning, I noticed two voice messages on my cell phone. Both were from my gynecologist, recorded earlier this morning before the office opened. Dr. Fisher always went to work by sunup, but she said she would give me my test results after the weekend. Why call me on Friday? Why hadn’t either rung through? My insides snagged. It had to be bad news. On the other hand, it was only a small lump. Probably nothing.
Too impatient to wait, I pulled to a stop on the side of the road and played the first message. No one spoke; the message stopped abruptly. How I hated spotty reception in Lake Tahoe. I selected the second message. The doctor said, “Aspen,” and the call cut off again. She’d sounded out of breath. In a hurry.
I phoned her back, but after twenty rings and no answer, I ended the call. “Dang it!” I slapped the steering wheel on my Jeep and resumed driving, ticked off at my doctor, my body, and the world.
At the junction near Tahoe City, dozens of cars were parked along the side of the road. Tourists in swimsuits and sandals, plenty of them with sunburns, stood bent over the rail at Fanny Bridge, named for the road crew foreman’s maiden aunt Fanny McGillicuddy Wilkerson, not for the countless people exposing their rear ends to passersby as they viewed the trout below.
As I made a right turn toward town, out of nowhere a sedan whizzed past me and then abruptly screeched to a halt. I honked the horn. The driver flipped me off and opened the passenger door for a pedestrian, the jerk.
While I waited, I drummed the center console concerned about Dr. Fisher’s call. Why had she sounded so breathy? Why had she hung up after saying my name?
Chill, Aspen. She could have done so because she realized she had her days wrong. She was busy. Heck, there were times I couldn’t figure out what day of the week it was until I consulted a calendar.
Forcing worrisome thoughts from my mind, I drove through town and made a left on Polaris Road toward North Tahoe School.
Minutes later, I waited in the carpool lane like all the other mothers, although I wasn’t a mother. A half year ago, my niece Candace moved in with me. When she first showed up, she was timid and confused and battling bulimia. Now, she was fourteen and fairly confident and could cook circles around me.
Candace loped to the curb and posed next to the passenger door, hand on one hip and fifteen-pound book bag balanced on the other. She swiped perspiration off her forehead and threw a nasty look over her shoulder.
I rolled down the window. “What’s going on?”
“I’m hot and cranky. Everyone is.”
“Well, lose the ’tude before you climb into the car.”
“Can I drive?”
“Not a chance.”
“Aw.” She pouted then cracked a smile, making my breath catch in my chest. Sometimes she looked so much like me—dark hair, green eyes, the Adams’s turned-up nose—even I had trouble remembering she wasn’t mine. Except for a few minor details like DNA, she could have been. That and the fact that I’d never had children. My ex-husband hadn’t wanted them. My boyfriend, Nick Shaper, did, but I refused to have a child without being married, and we weren’t there yet. I was thirty. Plenty of time.
“In the next couple of weeks, I’ll let you behind the wheel,” I promised. Occasionally on a Saturday, I took Candace to an empty parking lot and allowed her to drive. I wanted her to be ready and fearless when she got her permit. “But not today. Not with everyone behaving like a maniac.”
“It’s the heat. It’s almost a hundred degrees.” Candace slipped into the car and fastened her seat belt.
“How was your day?”
“So-so.”
“Was today’s final hard?”
“Not too bad.” Candace was ready to be finished with homework and dive into summer. She had plenty of things planned. Waterskiing and hiking with her best friend, Waverly, and t
o my dismay, movies and beach trips with the new boy in her life, Rory. His name made me think of Irish brawls and free-for-alls. Danger signs flashed in my mind. I nudged them aside. Parenting was proving to be one of the greatest challenges of my life.
“Which final did you have?” I asked.
“English. I think I aced the essays.”
“Great.”
Since obtaining official custody of Candace, I’d moved her education to the top of my priority list. For months, I’d tutored her so she would be ready to enter high school. When living with her mother—my sister, Rosie—she’d missed the first two months of eighth grade because she’d stayed home to take care of Rosie, who had suffered from a severe infection. Luckily, Rosie had shared her love of books with Candace, so the girl was a good reader, but her math and language skills needed help.
“What’s Monday’s test?” I asked as I made a right on North Lake Boulevard.
“Napoleon to the present.”
I moaned.
She giggled. “Luckily, I like history.”
“Glad to hear it.” History had never been my strong suit. My cell phone rang. I pressed the speaker button on the steering wheel. “Hello?”
“Aspen, it’s me.” Nick usually sounded upbeat and energetic. Not this time. He sounded tired. A detective for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, his work ran the gamut from breaking up bar fights to high-end crime. We’d been dating ever since he—we—solved the murder of my friend Vikki. “I can’t make dinner.”
“Okay.” I hadn’t told him about the lump. I’d planned to tonight. The conversation would have to wait. I was okay with that because, before we spoke, I wanted to get confirmation from Dr. Fisher that cancer had not infiltrated my body. “What’s up?”
“There’s been a murder.”
“Oh, no. Who?”
“Dr. Kristin Fisher.”
“Oh, no.” A flurry of emotions stuck in my throat as the doctor’s face flashed before me. Not forty-eight hours before, I’d sat white-knuckled on her examination table as she’d explained in measured, reassuring tones that I was going to be fine. In the two years since I’d moved to Lake Tahoe, we’d had many conversations . . . about teenagers and family skeletons and women’s rights. “She was my gynecologist,” I said.
“Mine, too,” Candace’s eyes filled with tears. I’d set up all sorts of doctor appointments for my niece after she’d moved in. Dr. Fisher had been one of them.
“You and three hundred others,” Nick said. “She must have had the largest practice this side of Sacramento.”
“When did she die?” I asked. “How?”
“No, Aspen. You don’t need to—”
“Nick, I can handle anything since Vikki’s murder.” I’d been the one to discover my friend bludgeoned to death, and though I was only a process server working for my aunt’s detective agency, I’d delved into Vikki’s murder with a vengeance.
Nick cleared his throat. “Dr. Fisher was killed early this morning. Her office assistant found her.”
“Nick, she called me this morning. Early. The first call ended abruptly.”
“The first?”
“She called back. I thought she was going to give me the results of a test. I—” Guilt roiled inside me. Had the killer attacked her as she was reaching out to me? If only I’d answered. “Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t want you to investigate,” Nick said. “I don’t want you to relive . . . you know.”
I liked that he worried about me. Other than my father, no man ever had. “I understand, but at least tell me how she died.”
“Are you on speakerphone?”
“Yes.”
Nick sighed, his reluctance obvious.
I grabbed my cell phone from the cup holder and switched to telephone mode. I knew it was illegal to drive with it in my hand, but for Candace’s sake, I had to do it. “It’s just me now,” I assured him. “Go on.”
“There was quite a struggle. She was stabbed in the abdomen. It was gruesome. A scalpel was used.”
My stomach lurched. I forced the bile down.
“We found the weapon. Wiped clean. No fingerprints on it.”
“Any suspects?”
Candace cut me a sharp look.
“Her nurse is in New York on vacation. Her office assistant was having breakfast with her boyfriend.”
“Who else is on your list?”
“Besides the multitude of patients,” Nick continued, “we’ll be questioning her ex-husband. He’s a pediatric surgeon in Reno. We’ll be looking at the money angle, of course, because of the size of the practice.”
“Considering the weapon, it sounds like a crime of passion. Spur of the moment.”
“What was the weapon?” Candace asked.
I silenced her with a look. “Did you review patient files, Nick?”
“A few.”
“Mine?”
“Why? Do you have secrets? Perhaps another lover?”
I welcomed his teasing during such a grim conversation. “As if. You’re all the man I can handle.” After the debacle of my marriage, I hadn’t believed I could love anyone again. But Nick was different. Special. A man filled with integrity and courage. He had been by my side as I took on the responsibility of raising Candace. He’d helped me deal with her illness. How many men would have done that?
“Most of the files were strewn on the floor,” he said. “A real mess. Detective King is going through all of them.” Kendra King was Nick’s number two in command. “As one of the doctor’s patients,” he went on, “you’ll be contacted at some point. I’ve got to go. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“We’re going to the Tavern for dinner,” I said. “If you can swing by on your way home, please do. You’ve got to eat.”
“Man, I hate this part of my job.”
“I know.” I blew him a kiss and received one from him in return.
Candace swiveled in her seat. “Dr. Fisher was so nice. Who would kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
I rolled down my window to let the scent of pine inside, but the aroma didn’t calm me as it normally would. Sorrow gripped my heart and my mind was a jumble of thoughts. Who had killed Kristin Fisher and why?
Chapter 2
“Did Nick tell you who the suspects are?” Candace asked as I maneuvered the Jeep around curves toward the Homewood Tavern, my go-to restaurant for more than a year. Over the past hour, she’d asked me numerous questions. I hadn’t provided any responses. She deserved my attention.
“The doctor’s ex-husband is one.”
“No way. I met him. At the office.”
“I didn’t.” And I was always with her for appointments.
“You’d gone to get a coffee. He was nice.” Though still timid in some ways, Candace had strong opinions about murder and didn’t hesitate to voice them. Crime investigation shows on television had become her passion. “He was gentle.”
“Gentle people commit crimes.”
“How did it happen?”
Up until now, she hadn’t asked that question. I was hoping she would skip it. I shuddered as the few details Nick had revealed cycled through my mind. I chose the one that I could share. “There was a struggle. The office was a mess. Files were strewn everywhere.”
“Maybe it was a robbery.” Candace tugged the hem of her white cable-knit sweater. When we’d met in the foyer to leave for dinner, we’d laughed. We had dressed the same—sweater over jeans.
“I’m starved,” I said, eager to change the subject. “Are you hungry?”
“Sort of.”
I pulled into a spot in the Tavern parking lot. As I set the handbrake, I gazed past the rustic building and caught a glimpse of the lake and surrounding mountains, which were a majestic purple in the waning light. The image helped me draw a deep calming breath. Lake Tahoe was magnificent. As long as the English Channel and half again as wide as San Francisco Bay, it shimmered with blues and greens that artists l
oved to recreate.
We took the front steps two at a time and pushed our way through the restaurant’s saloon-style doors. Inside, laughter and the strains of the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” greeted us. A few regulars standing by the colorful jukebox recognized me and waved. I waved back. The bar area was filled with sunburned patrons. People often forgot about how intense the sun’s rays could be in Tahoe’s altitude. The city was a mile above sea level.
“Follow me,” I said to my niece.
As was typical in summer, even after a hotter than hot day, the night was chilly. A fire crackled in the stone fireplace. The piquant aroma of burning wood was delicious. I steered her into the bar toward one of the many oak tables for two, each set with a hurricane candle.
Gwen Barrows, the owner of the restaurant and a good friend, was nowhere in sight. The newest addition to the staff, Peggy, a bony-shouldered bartender, was flipping channels on the television hanging above the bar. She stopped on ESPN, which was broadcasting the latest skateboard competition.
“Hey, Peggy,” a red-faced man at the bar yelled. “When did you install the squawk box?”
“Last week. Nowadays, people want to keep in touch with news and sports.”
“Not me.”
“This place doesn’t cater only to you,” she quipped.
I tossed my leather tote on the chair and said to Candace, “Pepsi or Seven-Up?”
“Pepsi with a cherry?” Despite her newfound confidence, she hadn’t quite learned how to give an order without a question mark.
“Peggy—”
“On it,” she replied.
“Pour me a glass of the house chardonnay.”
Gwen diligently watched her expenses and income, but she never cut corners on liquor. There were more than ten quality beers on tap at all times, as well.
In less than a minute, Peggy filled the order.
“Aspen, can I pick some songs on the jukebox?” Candace asked.
“Sure.” I handed her a couple of quarters.
She grabbed her drink from the counter, sauntered toward the machine, and dropped in a coin. She depressed a button and seconds later her narrow hips began swaying in rhythm to the Eagles’ “Take It Easy.” A girl after my own heart. I adored classics by the Eagles and Elvis and Sinatra, but I also enjoyed the latest from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.