Free Kitten Kaboodle (Zoe Donovan Mystery Book 20) by Kathi Daley Page B

laugh.
    “After she threw half the dishes in the cupboard at me we talked about what had happened and agreed to take a break while we figured out whether our marriage could be saved. I made it clear I wanted us to work on our relationship and put the whole thing behind us, but I could tell Wanda didn’t believe I was really through with Edna. During that time-out Wanda ran into Edna in the grocery store, and I guess you heard what happened there.”
    “Yes, their fight has been the topic of conversation on the Ashton Falls gossip network ever since Edna died.”
    “I know it seems as if Wanda has a tendency toward violence. First she hits me with a frying pan and then she attacked Edna. But I promise you she wouldn’t have hit Edna with a shovel, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    Actually, I hadn’t been thinking that, but now that he mentioned it, it did seem Wanda had a habit of striking out at people who angered her.
    “I feel like such an idiot. Wanda wouldn’t be dealing with any of this if I hadn’t let Edna seduce me.”
    “Well, maybe now that Edna’s gone you have a chance at saving your marriage.”
    “I sure hope so. The woman means the world to me. I’m lost without her.”
    I looked directly at Pete. “If you didn’t kill Edna and Wanda didn’t kill Edna, do you know who might have?”
    “You might want to talk to Donald Jacobs.”
    Donald’s was one of the names Aspen had given me. I remembered her saying Edna had been stalking him, but I wanted to see what Pete might say. “Why would Donald kill Edna?”
    “Because the crazy bitch was stalking him the way, I now realize, she’d been stalking me. I was gullible and I really believed she just happened to need groceries at the same time I did, and that it was just a coincidence that we ended up in the same line at the DMV. I’ve been married a long time and having a single woman flirting with me fed my ego. I was such a fool. After I gave her the five grand and broke things off she began stalking Donald and I could see the whole thing was a con. She wasn’t into me at all. It seemed to be her pattern to find men to sleep with and then blackmail them. I was going to warn Donald, but I didn’t need to. He wasn’t as gullible as me. He made it clear to her from the beginning that he wanted nothing to do with her.”
    “Yet it sounded like she continued to stalk him.”
    “Yeah. As odd as it seems, the more he resisted her charms, the more determined she seemed to be to conquer him. If you ask me that woman was about to send him over the deep end.”
    “So you think he finally flipped out and killed her?”
    Pete appeared to be considering my question. “Edna could get under your skin. She had a way of making a person do things he might not otherwise have done. If you talk to Donald keep in mind that if he did kill Edna, in my mind he was totally justified.”
    As Charlie and I walked back to my car, I had to wonder how the murder of a kitten mill owner had turned into something so much more. If it wasn’t for the fact that the kittens had been left on my doorstep shortly after Edna was killed, I’d go out on a limb and theorize that the kitten mill didn’t play into her death at all.
    I was tempted to try to track down Donald right then, but a quick glance at the clock on my dashboard informed me that I’d best leave that interview until the following day if I didn’t want to be late for my dinner with Mother Zimmerman and the Zimmerman cousins. Of course by the time I endured a dinner out with the Zimmermans it might be me in jail for murder. I know it seems as if I absolutely hate my mother-in-law. It isn’t really that I hate her. She’d brought Zak into the world and for that I would always be grateful. It was more that the woman seemed to know exactly which buttons to push to make me want to run from the room screaming every time I talked to her. When Zak and I had married I’d vowed to find a way to get along with his