Sarah Graves - Tool & Die: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (Home Repair Is Homicide Mysteries)

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PDB Name: Sarah Graves - 08 - Tools & Die

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Creation Date: 5/17/2008

Modification Date: 5/17/2008

Last Backup Date: 1/1/1970

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Synopsis:

Jacobia Jake Tiptree traded her power-broker life for a run-down dream house in peaceful Eastport, Maine. But the do-it-yourself enthusiast is learning that no matter how carefully you build your home, murder has a way of slipping in through the cracks.... Its a bright June afternoon and old-house-fixer-upper Jake Tiptree is driving through downeast Maine on an unusual errand. Shes getting ready to interview a large, angry man with a criminal history. Jim Diamond may or may not be harassing his ex-wife with life-threatening letters, but Jake promised her new housekeeper, Bella Diamond, shed look into the matter. An ex-con and a deadbeat, Jim Diamond doesnt have a history of violence... that is, not until Jake arrives at his apartment and discovers that a killer has been there first. Suddenly Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, find themselves at the center of a murder with too many suspects and too few clues. And as if thats not enough, Jake is now saddled with the manic Bella, whose certainty that shell be the next victim is fueling a supercompulsive neatness one that threatens to clean Jake and her long-suffering husband, Wade, out of house and home. Add to that a moose in her kitchen, a rebellious son with a habit of dumping Miss Right for Miss Wrong, and a troublesome ex of her own, and Jake is already at wits end. Then she gets word that a horde of her dads long-lost relatives mean to descend on Eastport, intending to be put up at her far-from-fixed-up fixer-upper. When the killer does strike again, its not where Jake expects... and the victim couldnt be more of a surprise. For this is a case bigger than the usual angry ex-spouse variety, and now that Jake and Ellie have gotten themselves involved, theyve each won a special place in a ruthless murderers master plan of greed, deception, and death. And the prize? A pair of eternally private rooms six feet under!

Tool & Die

By

Sarah Graves

The eighth book in the Home Repair is Homicide Mysteries series

Copyright a 2005 by Sarah Graves

Chapter 1

It was a bright June afternoon in downeast Maine, and my friend Ellie White and I were on our way to visit a large angry man with a criminal history. His name was Jim Diamond and we just wanted to ask him a question.

But his answerplus what he said after he answeredcould put him behind bars again, and he would know that because I meant to tell him about it.

So I was nervous, a little.

As a rule I try to avoid angry persons with criminal pasts. For one thing I spend most of my time fixing up a big old house; thus my days are already fraught with potential injury. But Jim Diamonds ex-wife had been getting anonymous threats and I had an urgent personal reason for trying to have them stopped.

Job one was finding out for certain that Diamond was the culprit, as I suspected. Once he admitted it, I intended to assure him that if he didnt agree to cutting it out pronto, my next visit would be to his probation officer.

Hey, it might work, I told myself for the dozenth time. He could just lie about his guilt, but I didnt expect this. Small-time troublemakers generally dont, once they know somebodys got their number.

And even if he tried, I was confident that I could detect it. Back in the big city when I was a hotshot money manager Id done business with fellows so corrupt, their code of conduct consisted almost entirely of the seven deadly sins.

As a result I was sure I could smell a rat if one presented itselfyet another reason Id wanted to check out Jim Diamond in person: to get a good whiff.

But my second thoughts were mounting like the miles on the odometer as Ellie and I sped down Route 1 in the dandy little car Id bought from a friend the previous autumn. It was an old Fiat 124 Sport Spyder with a black cloth top, apricot paint job, and five speeds forward, plus a professionally installed infant car seat.

The Fiat also had lots more engine than it required for its small size; that fifth speed could be very interesting. And now that we were on the road I hoped fervently that we wouldnt need every bit of power the little car possessed, to make our escape.

Ellie by contrast seemed entirely unworried, which for her was pretty much par for the course. Ellie would worry when pieces of sky actually began hitting the ground, and shattering there into tiny cloud-splotched pieces. Relaxing in the bucket seat beside me she let her head fall back onto the headrest, putting her face up into the sunshine dappled by summer leaves and by the ancient evergreens towering at either side of the road.

Oh, that feels lovely, she murmured.

It did, too, and especially by comparison. Just a few weeks earlier wed endured a three-day visitation of sleet, which to my mind is only a little less trying than a visitation of boils, but the weather was standard for what I thought mustve been the most extended winter in Maine history.

I hope Jim doesnt have a gun, I said, zipping through the S turns of the narrow two-lane road while mentally thumbing my nose at the massive recreational vehicles lumbering past us in the other direction. It was the first big week of Maines tourist season.

Ellie turned, wrinkling her freckled nose at me in surprise. For a trip with the top down she had pinned her hair into a red-gold twist. Curly wisps escaped prettily all around her head.

Jacobia, you know he wont, she told me. Weve been over that already. Besides, its illegal for an ex-convict to have a gun, she finished blithely.

This I thought ignored an important fact about how Jim Diamond got to be a convict in the first place. But it was true, wed researched the guy very carefully in the firearms department, not wanting to blunder unwittingly into any high-caliber developments. Between my husband Wades friends and Ellies husband Georges, wed been in touch with just about anyone who might have sold or given Jim Diamond a deadly weapon, and nobody had.

So unless hed found one by the side of the road somewhereI happened to know that hed come out of jail owning little more than the clothes he was wearing when he was arrestedJim would be unarmed.

And anyway, I wasnt about to turn back.

We sped over the Harmonyville Bridge, the wide mouth of the river below us tumbling and foaming with the force of the tide rushing into it. To our left the river opened into Passamaquoddy Bay, deep blue with a little red scallop dragger puttering out as we passed and gulls drawing white V shapes on the azure sky.

Besides, were not going to argue with him, Ellie added. Were just going to blind him with science.

The science in this case being a simple equation: he talks to us = we dont talk to his probation officer. Assuming he owned up to being a bullying rascal, I mean, and promised to quit.

Still I couldnt seem to shake the notion that the whole thing might turn out to be far more complicated than that. After all, Diamond hadnt been very susceptible to the do it = go to jail equation in the first place, had he?

But I really needed those threats stopped, and the police had been no help in doing anything about them. So I pressed the gas pedal down a little harder as we entered the Moosehorn Wildlife Refuge.

Atop a tall wooden platform a hundred yards from the road, a bald eagle swiveled its enormous white head slowly, gazing down at us from a nest big enough to belong to a pterodactyl. The Fiats engine growled as if it, too, were some species of predatory wildlife when I downshifted for the next set of curves.