Lorna Barrett - Sentenced to Death

Alexa and Boris Kozlov had emigrated from Russia to the United States a decade before. Alexa reminded Tricia of the Soviet women weightlifters of old; tall, muscular, and a little bit more than androgynous, with a rather husky voice to go with the package. Tricia always envisioned someone with the name of Boris to be big, beefy, and jovial, but this Boris was none of those things. Alexa had worked hard to eradicate her accent; Boris had not. Alexa joked with her customers, making them feel at home. Boris brooded and seldom looked his patrons in the eye.

Tricia preferred to deal with Alexa.

“Good to see you, Tricia,” Alexa said. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll take two pounds of the French roast ground coffee and a cup of it to go, please.”

“Coming right up,” Alexa said, and stepped over to the big rack that housed at least twenty different flavored coffees. She poured the beans into a specialty bag with the Coffee Bean logo emblazoned on it and then transferred them to the coffee grinder to her left. “What’s new?”

“I’m collecting money for an education fund for Deborah Black’s son, Davey. Would you like to donate something?”

Alexa hesitated.

“Nyet,” Boris growled, and let go of a case of their store’s paper cups. It banged against the side of the counter. “Why should we give a ting to that dura ?”

Tricia didn’t speak Russian, but she knew an epithet when she heard one.

“Boris!” Alexa admonished, and looked embarrassed.

“Something wrong?” Tricia asked in all innocence.

Alexa’s face colored. “Our neighbor was not our favorite person.”

That didn’t seem right. Everyone loved Deborah.

“That vor dura ,” Boris snarled, and for a moment Tricia thought he might accentuate that statement by spitting. Bewildered, she bounced her gaze between the husband and wife.

Again, Alexa hesitated before speaking. “We had a problem. . . .” She paused, as though trying to think of a polite way to phrase something unpleasant. “Garbage.”

Tricia blinked, startled. “Garbage?”

“That dura always put her trash in our Dumpster,” Boris said, his voice rising. “Then she’d lie about it. She’d blame her help, she’d blame teenagers.”

Alexa nodded in agreement. “We set up a camera to catch her. Even when we showed her the video, she still denied she did it,”

“She was a thieving dura and a liar,” Boris growled.

Deborah’s business did generate a lot of boxes and packing material, and Tricia seemed to remember seeing garbage totes behind the Happy Domestic—much smaller and cheaper than the Dumpsters behind Haven’t Got a Clue. Deborah had been struggling to cut costs for a long time. Was it possible she’d literally dumped the majority of her garbage in her neighbor’s backyard?

“How long has this been going on?” Tricia asked.

“Since the day that dura opened her store,” Boris said.

That was at least three years, and in that time Tricia had never heard about it. She said so.

“We keep our business to ourselves,” Alexa said.

“If we’d said something, we might have shamed her into keeping her garbage to herself,” Boris added.

That didn’t exactly make sense, but Tricia got the gist of his complaint.

Alexa bagged Tricia’s purchase, handed her the cup of coffee, and rang up the sale.

“I’m very sorry to hear that you and Deborah didn’t get along. I’m also a little confused.”

“We’re hearing the store will be sold quickly,” Alexa said. News sure got around fast. “We hope our new neighbor will respect our Dumpster.”

“If they don’t—” Boris swiped his index finger across his throat, like a knife slash.

Tricia swallowed, glad she didn’t have the Kozlovs as her neighbors. As she left the store, she wondered if Deborah had ever felt the same way.

Ginny was with a customer when Tricia finally returned to Haven’t Got a Clue. Miss Marple greeted her as though she hadn’t seen her in years, and demanded to be made a fuss over. All that petting produced a lot of cat hair, and Tricia had to seek out the lint roller from under the cash desk to keep her pretty white blouse from looking like a gray angora sweater.

Along with the day’s mail, Ginny had left several catalogs on the counter. During the last week, they’d talked about making lists of items they might like to feature during the upcoming Christmas season. Ginny had made out her wish list and clipped it to the top of the pile. Tricia ran a finger down items and smiled. They were all things she also had thought of ordering. It pleased her that Ginny was so in tune with the things she wanted for the store, which only made Ginny’s complaint earlier in the day so painful to recall. She’d have to get to Stoneham Hardware to have an extra key made for the store and give it to Ginny, and then she’d take Angelica up on her offer of an early dinner one night to show Ginny that she trusted her. That night was out of the question, as Baker wasn’t picking her up until after closing.

Tricia sorted through the letters on top of the stack of mail. Bills and junk mail. On the bottom was a bubble-pack envelope. She glanced at the return address and sighed. It belonged to her ex-husband.

She pulled at her collar to touch the chain around her neck. She still wore the locket he’d sent for her birthday two months before and suddenly realized what tomorrow’s date signified. It would have been their thirteenth wedding anniversary. They’d only lasted ten years, and she couldn’t even count that last year together as married bliss. Christopher’s midlife crisis had caused him to leave his stockbroker’s job—and Tricia, too—to go find himself in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Since he left, they’d spoken only once on the telephone. Tricia had sent a brief thank-you note for the locket. It held a picture of Miss Marple. Christopher’s note had said, “To remind you of the one you love best.” It still irked her. After all, she hadn’t left him for a cat.

She reached for the pair of scissors she kept in a coffee mug on the counter, along with an assortment of pens and pencils. Cutting the package open, she wondered what he had sent this time. Another locket? A bracelet?

She cut through the extra bubbled plastic wound around a small green velvet jewelry box but hesitated before opening it. Was there a card? She looked inside the padded envelope. Sure enough, a small card remained at the bottom. She used the scissors to slice open the top. The picture was a watercolor of a swan swimming on a peaceful pond. Water lilies broke the surface of the water, and all was serene. Inside, Christopher had written: Ahh, for what might have been. Christopher .

What might have been!

Christopher had been the one who didn’t want to go through marriage counseling.

Christopher had been the one to propose divorce.

Christopher had been the one to leave.

Tricia fought the seething anger that coursed through her. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to toss the card and the gift straight into the trash. How could the man be so . . . so insensitive?

Or maybe he was just stupid.

Alone, in the mountains—with another long winter ahead of him—maybe Christopher had mellowed. Maybe he was expecting her to make some kind of grand gesture.

Come home, darling, all is forgiven.

Ha! Fat chance of that happening.

Tricia wrenched open the velvet jewelry box. This time he’d sent stud earrings. They sparkled like diamonds—but had to be cubic zirconium. No one in their right mind would send diamonds in a plain padded envelope without benefit of insurance and a return receipt.