Killer, Paper, Cut (The Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries) Read online

  KILLER, PAPER, CUT

  ~

  A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery

  By Joanna Campbell Slan

  ~

  Dedication –

  To my Beta Babes with thanks!

  Allyson Faith McGill, Amy Gill, Amy Goodyear, Ann Shepard, Barb Dalton Hendrichs, Barbara Tobey, Bette Jaker Barr, Brenda Hambleton Cermak, Candi Bise, Christine Hellewell Jensen, Christina Ohsohappily Vance, Dana James, Diana Vassiliades, Deanna Turner Godman, Donna Wilson-Weaver, Donna McGrady Wendell, Dru Ann L Love, Ginny Kiernan Dahlberg, Heather Boyer Valdez, Jen Ebright, Kathy Pellizi Mizera, Linda Hutchinson Donahue, Linda Carlson Johnson, Lynn Tondro Bisset, Marla Husovsky, Mary Kennedy, Molly Tolar Franks, Monique Broz, Nancy Thomas Hanna, Sara Smith Tagliere, Sarah Schultz Ackerman, Stephanie Matoushek-Koenig, Terrie Hogan Allison, Tracy Barcus, Tricia Davis Conner, Victoria Bray, Victoria Hrabe, Yifat Cestare, and of course, Sally Lippert.

  ~

  Killer, Paper, Cut: A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery © 2013 by Joanna Campbell Slan.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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

  Other books in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series:

  #1 -- Paper, Scissors, Death (2008)

  #2 -- Cut, Crop & Die (2009)

  #3 – Ink, Red, Dead (Revised 2013)

  #4 -- Photo, Snap, Shot (2010)

  #5 -- Make, Take, Murder (2011)

  #6 -- Ready, Scrap, Shoot (2012)

  #7 -- Picture, Perfect, Corpse (2013)

  #8 -- Group, Photo, Grave (Oct. 2013)

  #9 -- Killer, Paper, Cut (Oct. 2013)

  Praise for Joanna Campbell Slan—

  “(One of) mystery’s rising stars.”

  --RT Book Reviews

  Praise for the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series—

  “This isn’t your typical cozy. There’s more meat on the bones.”

  --Kittling: Books on Make, Take, Murder

  “A darn good read with a surprise ending. I highly recommend it.”

  --A Bit Bookish on Make, Take, Murder

  Praise for the series--

  “(Kiki Lowenstein is) our best friend, our next-door neighbor and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous.”

  --RT Book Reviews

  For a complete list of other works by Joanna Campbell Slan, go to http://tinyurl.com/JoannaSlan

  Killer, Paper, Cut

  A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery

  By Joanna Campbell Slan

  Author’s Note: In the timeline of Kiki’s life, this is Book #9. It comes after Group, Photo, Grave.

  Chapter 1

  Friday evening, ten days before Halloween…

  The Old Social Hall, St. Louis, Missouri

  Blood spurted all over my hands and plopped onto my Keds.

  I’ve seen some pretty clumsy crafters in my day, but Mary Martha Delaney took the cake and iced it, too. She had managed to cut through the paper, her mat, the table, and her palm—and we were only five minutes into our project.

  Worse yet, the silly thing watched the blood run down her arm before smearing it on her blouse. At first glance, Mary Martha looked like a kindergartener covered in poster paint. There was red stuff on her sleeve, wiped across her bosoms, and dripping on her white stretch pants.

  Did I mention the sight of blood makes me woozy?

  It does. Especially now that I’m nearly seven months pregnant.

  But I was the C.I.C.C. or Crafter In Charge of the Crop, "crop" being the accepted term for a scrapbooking party.

  My name’s Kiki Lowenstein, and I’m a scrapbooker. I was also hostess of this little soiree because I own Time in a Bottle, the scrapbook and craft store that sponsored this event, a fundraiser that we'd named the "Halloween Crafting Spook-tacular."

  In my private life, I'm the mother of Anya, who is thirteen going on thirty, and five-year-old Erik. Rounding out our household is my sweetheart and the father of my baby, Detective Chad Detweiler, and Bronwyn Macavity, otherwise known as "Brawny," our live-in nanny.

  Yep, a lot of people depend on me. I'd promised my family that I could handle this crop, even though I was so tired that passing out sounded, sort of, heavenly. Like a brief unscheduled nap. But I couldn't relinquish my responsibilities that easily. Nope, I'm too much of a trooper.

  While I struggled to keep from fainting, Mary Martha's friend Dolores Peabody reached over and pressed a tissue into Mary Martha’s cut. That proved largely ineffective. In fact, it increased the flow. Now Dolores sported a bright red smear of blood across the front of her tee-shirt. Mary Martha turned and managed to wipe blood on me, explaining, "Your belly was in the way."

  The sour look she cast at my tummy told me that she knew I wasn’t married. I’d run into that response before, so I wasn’t unprepared. Irked yes, but not totally taken off guard.

  "Maybe this will help." Patricia Wojozynski was another friend of Mary Martha's. Patricia pressed her cotton hanky into Mary Martha’s hand. But Patricia underestimated the amount of blood we were dealing with. Soon she too was wiping blood all over her own clothes.

  Time to pull up my big girl maternity panties and take control.

  "Um, Mary Martha, we need to get you to the emergency room." I reached down to put steady pressure on the wound. My free hand cupped her elbow and urged her to stand. This produced no result because Mary Martha was big enough to be both a Mary and a Martha.

  "Heavens no. Thank the good Lord, it’s just a scratch. I’ll offer it up to Jesus."

  Something told me he’d rather have flowers on the altar, but who am I to judge?

  "Gee, I don’t know. This is bleeding pretty good." The smell of copper in the air encouraged me to heave.

  "Pretty well," said Clancy, from her spot ten feet away. Nothing made her madder than misuse of English grammar. Clancy was conducting this portion of our event. Although she’s new to crafting, she’s learning fast.

  "Uh, pretty well," I repeated after my friend. "Clancy, we’ve got a problem here."

  "Good luck," she said, without turning a hair of her perfectly shaped auburn bob. "Let's continue with our project. The next step is to rub your chalk applicator across the brown chalk and use it to edge your pumpkin."

  Edge their pumpkins, my left foot. Clancy was purposely ignoring my crisis. Given a taste of teaching cardmaking, Clancy had become quite the expert. She loved seeing novice stampers turn out brilliant results. I have to admit that I’m impressed by her newfound ability. Funny how when a person finds her crafting niche, she can really shine—and that’s exactly what Clancy has done.

  "Laurel? Can you help Kiki?" Clancy called out to our other co-worker.

  "I'm on it." Laurel Wilkins trotted over. In one hand was the first aid kit we brought to every crop. But she was stopped in her progress because of all the junk Mary Martha and friend had spread all over the floor.

  "I think Kiki is making this worse!" said Mary Martha.

  Nice. Really nice. I fought the urge to give Mary Martha a kick in the shins. Suffice it to say, I haven't been in a good mood lately.

  "Oh, my," said Laurel. "Does it hurt much, Mary Martha? Are you okay? You poor baby. How about if we go to the ladies room and see how much of this we can get wi
ped off? Then I’ll dress the wound."

  "It’s God’s plan that you’d be here to help, Laurel," said Mary Martha.

  "Kiki, could you help her get over to me? I'll take it from there," said Laurel, tossing that fabulous mane of blond hair out of her face. As usual, she looked as if she'd just stepped from the pages of a Boston Proper catalog. I, on the other hand, looked as if I'd swallowed a beach ball and forgotten to burp.

  I could do this. I’ve done harder things. Taking Mary Martha’s elbow, I walked her around the end of the table and pointed her toward Laurel.

  My stomach heaved as I stood in the middle of a room full of crafters, soaked in Mary Martha's blood, surrounded by bloody pieces of facial tissue.

  Why, oh, why had I agreed to hold an offsite crop?

  Was it because the idea of helping people with diabetes had proved irresistible?

  Or because I was a fool?

  Chapter 2

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  If I wasn't so squeamish about getting a tattoo, I'd have that inked to my upper thigh. When our friend Laurel Wilkins asked that we help her with a charity crop to raise money for the Diabetes Research Foundation, I said, "Sure! Easy-peasy. We R crops."

  I underestimated the amount of blood, sweat, and tears necessary to pull off a really stunning, over-the-top, mega-successful event. An event worthy of its title—the Halloween Crafting Spook-tacular—to be held ten days before the actual holiday.

  So sue me.

  When I bought Time in a Bottle, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what the store's founder, Dodie Goldfader, did to make everything hunky-dory. Boy, was I ever wrong. There were tons of behind the scenes details that I never expected. Instead of a learning curve, I was climbing Mount Everest without benefit of sherpas. In a snow storm. While pregnant. In high heels.

  Sigh.

  In order for any off-site crop to be successful, there were a myriad of moving parts that had to be coaxed into alignment. Since this crop was a fundraiser, every tiny detail had to be considered carefully so that we didn't waste a cent of the money coming in. The event had to make a splash, or people wouldn't shell out their hard-earned coins to come. The party had to appeal to scrapbookers, cardmarkers, and papercrafters of all ilks. The make-and-take portion—the actual crafts we'd be teaching our guests—had to be unique, simple to do, but cool enough that they wouldn't bore our regular store clientele to tears. The entertainment had to be exceptional, and the location had to offer a high *wow* factor. And last, but definitely not least…we had to have food. Really, really good food.

  After considering all our options, I had concluded that there was really only one place worthy of such a big event, the Lemp Mansion on DeMenil Place. The mansion has a history of misery second to none.

  In 1876, beer baron William J. Lemp and his wife Julia moved in, turning the thirty-three room house into a showplace. Lemp also decided to use his home as his office, taking advantage of a tunnel extending from the house to the caves under St. Louis. These naturally occurring storage shelters provided the refrigeration so vitally important to the brewing process.

  Thanks to a series of shrewd business decisions made by William, the Falstaff brand expanded from a local brew to a label enjoyed around the world. Although the Lemps were thriving financially, unbeknownst to William and Julia, their fourth son, Frederick, had significant health problems. When Frederick died from complications, William shot himself in despair.

  William J. Lemp, Jr. ("Billy") took over the family business. He and his wife Lillian, nicknamed the "Lavender Lady," moved into the Lemp Mansion. An acrimonious divorce followed. Billy was granted only visitation rights to see his son, William III. Two years later, Prohibition dealt a harsh blow to the business, and Billy was forced to sell first the trademark name and then the brewery.

  Meanwhile, after suffering her own marital problems, Billy's sister shot herself. Two years later, later, Billy shot himself in his office in the mansion. And two decades later, the last Lemp to live in the mansion, Charles, shot his dog and then himself in the head.

  In 1980, Life magazine named the Lemp Mansion one of the nine most haunted houses in the country. Supposedly, the Lavender Lady walks the halls at night. Both the Discovery and the Travel Channel have given the Lemp Mansion a nod for being terrifying.

  Since I'm such a Chicken Little, I decided that we'd tour the Lemp Mansion while it was still daylight, walk one block over to The Old Social Hall, where we'd have our crop. While we worked on our projects and ate, we'd have an actress, Faye Edorra, entertain us with ghost stories. Faye billed herself as a "historical re-enactor," so I hired her to put on a one-woman show, complete with visuals that would give my attendees a reason to whip out their cameras and take copious photos. Faye had proposed dressing as the Lavender Lady herself. As a way of memorializing the tragedies that had occurred in the Lemp Mansion, Faye would wear ripped and bloodied clothes in shades of purple. While our guests worked on their projects, she would stroll around the room offering to stop and pose so our guests could have their pictures taken with her, er, "Lillian Lemp."

  Once I had the big entertainment (the Lemp Mansion), the ongoing entertainment (Faye Edorra) and the actual crop location (The Old Social Hall) taken care of, I moved on to procuring our food.

  You can't have a crop without food. It's simply not done. Although my friend Cara Mia Delgatto had moved to Florida, I still relied on her family restaurant for most of our catering needs. A young woman named Angela Orsini had recently been promoted to the post of catering manager. Angela and I had worked up a fun menu for the charity crop. The Old Social Hall had a kitchen, so we were good to go. There were two large meeting rooms. I figured that we would crop in Room A, and then adjourn to Room B to eat. That would keep food and drink away from paper products, preventing the predictable disasters caused by spillage.

  With all those moving parts were in place, I turned my attention to our raison d'être (in high school French class, I learned that meant "reason for existence"), the crafting portions of our crop. Time in a Bottle is famous for having the coolest make-and-take events in town. Not only are our projects creative, we also strive to teach crafters a new skill. Yes, we’ve set the bar high, and pregnant or not, it’s my job to keep jumping over it.

  Except that right now, thanks to the fact I was wearing Mary Martha’s blood all over me, I wasn't jumping. I was gathering bloody tissues and tossing them into the trash. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to puke or faint or both. I settled on heading for the bathroom so I could be prepared for either possibility. As I started through the doorway, who should pass me but Mary Martha!

  While I'd turned pea green, she looked positively radiant.

  Chapter 3

  After being sick as a dog, I splashed my face with cold water, rinsed my mouth, and struggled to wipe blood off my maternity top. That proved futile, but it did help dilute the smell. Even though my lovely blouse was soaked through, I felt a lot better. I headed out of the bathroom, planning to find a quiet spot where I could sit down for a minute while my head cleared and my tummy settled. The only empty chair was over by Mary Martha and friends.

  "The food will be ready when you are. Is this what you expected? Crowd-wise?" asked Angela, after I'd plopped down gracelessly into the chair. "So much activity? Usually we plan for ten percent of the people not to show up, but every place here is filled!"

  What had started as a modest idea quickly became an overnight sensation. The media loved the irony. Here we were pairing a candy-centric holiday with a diabetes research fundraiser. Almost as soon as we sent out our email newsletter, I began fielding calls from the media. Two days after we announced the event, we had sold out all our seating at our First Annual Halloween Crafting Spook-tacular.

  It wasn't just the media exposure that brought people in. Father Joe Tinsley was a friend of Laurel's and a former student of Clancy's. The young Episcopal priest had given our event his whole-hearted endorseme
nt from the pulpit.

  "There are those who think celebrating Halloween is wrong," he told his audience. "But that totally depends on your intent. Is it to glorify death? Then, it’s wrong. Is it to appreciate life and honor the memories of the departed? That’s worthy. And I can think of no effort more worthy than to support research into the cure of diabetes."

  Once word got around that Father Joe endorsed our crop, the waiting list had grown dramatically. Since the crop was for an important cause, I called Angela and asked if we there was any way we could schedule a second event.

  "We'll make it happen. My stepson has diabetes, so I'm totally onboard," she said.

  After she said yes, the other pieces fell into place. Here I was, fresh from hosing myself down in the bathroom, staring at thirty-five women and their scrapbook supplies. Make that thirty-four. Mary Martha was still being coddled by Laurel. I glanced at the accident-prone crafter and tried not to let the sight of her blood really register on my senses.

  "Oh no," said Mary Martha, "I don't know how I'll ever finish my Halloween card."

  "I can help you," Laurel said, glancing around for a place to sit.

  "There’s an extra chair right here," said Dolores. "Or there was. Kiki took it."

  I can take a hint. I stood up and whispered in Laurel's ear. "Keep an eye on Mary Martha. She’s the most accident-prone crafter I’ve ever met."

  I wobbled my way to the front of the room where Clancy was prepping for the next make-and-take session. When I couldn't find a chair, I sank down gratefully on the four-wheeled cart we'd used to haul supplies into the building.

  The crafters all worked on their projects for another twenty minutes without incident. Clancy kept an eye on her watch and the door. A young man in black slacks and white shirt stepped into the room and rang a small copper bell. "Dinner is served!"