Yule Be Magical (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 8) by Sara Bourgeois (popular novels TXT) 📗

I was standing outside Pepper’s apartment trying to figure out how we could go in without it counting as breaking and entering when a door down the hall opened. I was turning to scurry off when a guy stepped out into the hall and called out to me.

“Can I help you?” he asked and started walking towards us. “Are you a friend of Pepper’s?”

“I am,” I said.

“I’ve been waiting for someone to come by. Seems like her family isn’t too interested. I tried calling some of them. Are you here to go through her stuff? I could help pack things up,” he said. “My name’s Josh. Josh Haven to be exact. Uh, I’ve got a key if you want to go in and get started.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I felt terrible lying to the guy. He seemed so earnest and helpful. He also had a key to her apartment, and if he let me in, it wasn’t breaking and entering.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked as we walked through her front door.

Josh pushed a lock of his dishwater blond hair out of his face. He then used a middle finger to push his black glasses up his nose. Behind them, his gray-blue eyes were soft and kind.

“Well, I just came by to survey tonight. I’ve got to get home and get dinner started. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a look around and start formulating my plan.” The lie slipped out like melted butter. “Thank you so much for letting me in.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll just hang back and you can let me know if you need me,” he said.

“You don’t have to hang around,” I offered. “I’ll come knock on your door when I’m done.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t be too long. I just need to figure out how many boxes I’ll need,” I said.

I wanted him to leave so I could stop lying to him. I felt really bad about it, but I figured I could make up for it by hiring a company to come pack up her things. If she didn’t have anyone to do it for her, then at least I could help in that way.

“Okay, I’ll be around if you need me,” he said and then walked out of her apartment, leaving the door wide open.

I took Meri out of my bag and let him roam around. The apartment was small. It was one bedroom if you could call it that. The bedroom wasn’t much bigger than a large closet, and Pepper had a twin-size bed with no headboard pushed against the wall. On the other side of the bedroom was a narrow closet with a plastic accordion door.

There wasn’t much in it. A few outfits hung on the rod, and the shelf above contained an extra pillow and a few old blankets.

A pink shoebox on the floor caught my attention, though. I picked it up and put it on the bed before removing the lid. Inside were dozens of letters.

The first one I read was the letter lying on top. If I hadn’t read any others, it would have told me a story of a man who hated Pepper enough to kill her.

But it wasn’t just the one letter. There were dozens of them from the same man dating back a decade at least. All of them were hurt and angry.

They were from Pepper’s high school boyfriend. Apparently, she had been pregnant and had been sent away to have the baby. A baby she gave up for adoption without consulting him.

Reading the letters, I found out that he wasn’t hurt because they split up. He was hurt because his son was gone. He wanted the baby, and his parents would have helped him raise it.

Then later in the letters, it appeared that Pepper relented and told him what adoption agency she used. The letters were still furious, though, because as it turned out, the young man’s parents would have helped him raise the kid, but they wouldn’t help him go to court to get his son back.

He did that himself when he was eighteen, but when he met the adoptive family, he couldn’t go through with it. His son was happy, healthy, and had a life he couldn’t even hope to give him for a long time. Not at eighteen. That, and he couldn’t imagine ripping his little boy away from the only parents he ever knew. From the moment he laid eyes on the little guy, Kurt Prinn loved his child too much for that, so he settled for regular visitation.

He loved his child, but he hated Pepper.

Every new heartbreak and defeat, he wrote Pepper a letter. In all those years, losing his son and hating Pepper seemed to be what defined him and his life. Judging by the level of spite and vitriol in each letter, it seemed that Christmastime was the worst for Kurt. Those letters wear nearly the nastiest of all, and they came every year.

Every year that Kurt could spend Christmas and play Santa with his child was a fresh wound for him. It seemed to get worse too. As the years got closer to the little boy being middle-school aged, Kurt realized he’d never get back what he’d lost. The boy would become an adult in a few years, and he’d never get to be his father.

Was it enough to motivate him to kill Pepper? It sure seemed like it to me. I knew Jeremy would find these letters when he searched the apartment himself. He may have already found them.

Still, I used my phone to take a picture of a few of the worst. I wanted to have them just in case I decided to confront Kurt Prinn.

I didn’t find anything else significant in her tiny apartment. The most striking part was that she had a fridge and cabinets full of food. It appeared to be more food than even a family would eat, but then again, she