The Sam Prichard Series - Books 9-12 (Sam Prichard Boxed Set 3)

by David Archer

  Sam shook his head. “Look, Brittany, you can talk to me and we keep this quiet, or I can call Detective Parks at the homicide division of the Police Department, and you can talk to her. If you talk to her, she's likely to have you charged with obstructing justice, just because you didn't own up sooner. There's no way in the world you're going to get out of this, unless you tell me the truth, right now.”

  Brittany looked around the room, and noticed that the other barista was watching her out of the corner of her eye. She turned back to Sam and motioned with her head for him to follow her, then went to a table in the far back corner of the room. She sat down with her back to the wall, and Sam took the seat across from her.

  “Look, I really didn't want to be involved in this mess, anyway,” she said. “When the cops first called and asked me about that lady, I just didn't want to get involved, you know? That's why I said I didn't remember her coming in.”

  Sam watched her face as she spoke, and got the impression she might be telling him the truth. “So, nobody asked you to keep your mouth shut about this? If they did, you need to be honest with me about it, Brittany. That would mean that person is somehow involved in the murder, and covering up for them would make you an accessory. That alone is enough to get you sent to prison.”

  The girl closed her eyes for just a moment, then opened them, and Sam saw tears starting to well up. “Look, I just told you the truth. I really didn't want to get involved, so I just said I didn't remember.” She bit her bottom lip, and Sam leaned forward in his chair. He let his eyes bore directly into hers for a moment, but said nothing. “Okay, but it was later. My sister knew the guy who got killed, and I called her and was telling her about how the cops were asking me if I had seen this lady, and she told me that they took that lady to jail. She said the smart thing for me to do was stick to my story, because if I changed it, I might get in trouble.”

  Sam watched her closely, and saw no sign that she was being dishonest. “I can see how she might have thought she was giving you the best advice,” he said, “but, Brittany, if you had just admitted that you saw the woman with the wild hair, the police wouldn't have wasted their time arresting the wrong person. That guy was killed less than fifteen minutes before she got back there after leaving here, but even to drive from there to here and back and stopping to buy a coffee takes over forty-five minutes. That means she couldn't possibly have killed him and then come here and made it back when she did.”

  The tears were flowing freely by the time he finished speaking, and she had grabbed a napkin and was wringing it between her hands. “I didn't mean to do anything wrong,” Brittany said. “I mean, the cops arrested her, so I figured she must've done it. I didn't know it happened while she was here, or I would've said so, I swear I would have.”

  Sam nodded. “At least you're willing to be honest now,” he said. “I'm going to have to call Detective Parks, and she'll probably want me to bring you down now. I'm going to tell her that you called me, and said you suddenly remembered seeing her. Okay? That way it makes it sound like you really just wanted to do the right thing, all along, and you won't get in any trouble. That okay with you?”

  Tears still streaming, Brittany nodded furiously. “Oh, yes, thank you, thank you,” she said. “Really, I didn't mean to do anything wrong, I swear I didn't.”

  Sam reached across the table and patted her hand. “I know, Brittany,” he said. He took out his phone and dialed Karen's number. She answered on the second ring.

  “Karen, it's Sam. Listen, I got a call a little bit ago from the girl who works at that coffee shop, the one Candy said she went to that morning? She called me to tell me that she was thinking about it, and she suddenly remembered seeing somebody with multicolored hair that morning. I came down and showed her a picture of Candy on my phone, and she said that's definitely her.”

  Karen let out a sigh. “Well, hell,” she said. “That will help your client, but is there any way she can determine the exact time Candy was there?”

  Sam held the phone away for a moment and looked at Brittany. “Brittany, can you tell me what time that lady was here Sunday morning?”

  Brittany looked at him for a moment, then held up a finger and jumped up out of her chair. She ran over to the counter and pushed the other girl away from the register for a moment. She tapped a number of keys, and a long strip of paper printed out. She tore it off and hurried back over to Sam.

  Brittany laid the paper on the table and ran her finger down a list of transactions, suddenly pointing at one of them. “When I remembered her hair, I remembered that she got a Super Size Hazelnut Mocha and a cheesecake brownie, the one with the cheesecake-flavored frosting. That's this one right here, and look at the time-stamp on it.” She took a pen from a pocket and circled the items.

  Sam looked, then put the phone back up to his face. “Karen, what time did Charlie call 911 that morning?”

  “Just a moment,” Karen said, and he could hear her flipping through papers. “That call came in at 9:57 AM.”

  “And what time have you got down for the probable time of death?”

  “Well, Charlie said he found his dad about three minutes after he heard the scream, and he called 911 within a minute or two after that. Why?”

  “Because Candy was sitting at the drive-through window at this coffee shop at the exact moment you figure Carlos was killed. Brittany just got a printout from Sunday morning, and she remembers now what Candy bought. I'm looking at the transaction report, and it shows that she paid for her coffee at exactly 9:52 AM. There's no possible way she could have killed Carlos and made it here in less than a minute, it's a twenty-minute drive.”

  He could hear Karen groan. “You're killing me, Sam. Can you get that girl down here to make a statement? And bring that printout with her, okay?”

  “We'll be there within half an hour,” Sam said. “You can go ahead and start the paperwork to get Candy released, because this proves she has an airtight alibi.”

  “Fine, I'll get it started. You get her down here, and then you get your ass out there and find the real killer for me. That's the least you can do, since you're throwing all this egg on my face.”

  Sam nodded into the phone, grinning as he remembered that Karen could not see him. “That's my plan,” he said. He ended the call and looked at Brittany. “We need to tell your boss that you have to leave for an hour or two. I can assure him that it's police business, if you want, so you won't get in trouble.”

  She nodded, and went into the back for a moment. She came out a minute later to tell him that her boss said it was okay, and Sam led her out to his car.

  Getting Brittany's statement took only twenty minutes, and Karen thanked her for coming in. Sam told the girl he would meet her back at his car, then waited until she had left the office.

  “You got the release paperwork started?”

  Karen nodded. “Yeah, I did,” she said. “I'll take this over to Monica and get her to sign off on it. With this new evidence, she won't have any choice but to release your friend. It'll probably take a few hours, though; nothing happens around here as fast as we'd like it to.”

  Sam grinned as he got to his feet. “Isn't that the truth? I'll call her boyfriend and let him know to be waiting. He'll probably go to the jail and just sit in the lobby and wait there.”

  “As long as he doesn't come down here and wait,” Karen said with a grimace. “He's been calling me at least three times a day, and it's driving me crazy.”

  “Don't worry, I'll take care of Chris.” He turned and started toward the door, but then stopped and looked back at Karen. “Incidentally, don't get too excited about going after Randy Whitaker just yet. Would you believe he had the guts to come and face me today? Never even tried to deny what he does, just told me flat out that we'd never find a prosecutor who would touch him.”

  Karen looked at him for a moment, then threw the pen she was holding onto the desk. “I can believe it,” she said. “Like I told you before, there have b
een rumors about him for years. Nobody has been able to make anything stick so far, so I don't know why I thought we would be able to.”

  Sam shrugged. “Don't worry, we'll get him. For now, though, he convinced me that he wasn't behind Carlos's killing, so that just leaves me with a few thousand possible suspects.”

  Karen scowled at him. “By the way, I've got everybody looking for Roland Maxwell. He may not be connected to this murder, but it turns out we want to talk to him about other things. Well, when you figure out who you think might be the killer, you let me know. And if I run up on anyone who looks like a serious possibility for it, I'll tell you. Deal?”

  Sam grinned again. “Deal.”

  15

  Sam drove Brittany back to Sammy's, then called Chris Lancaster to let him know the good news. Chris was delighted, and as Sam had predicted, he decided to go down to the jail to wait for Candy's release to be processed. Once that call was finished, Sam decided it was time to check in with Indie.

  Indie and Kenzie were out having fun, of course, but Indie had added a feature to Herman that allowed him to send links to his reports straight to her phone. “Sam,” she said, “Herman can't find a bank account for Roland Maxwell, anywhere. If he's getting paid the way Carlos was, it must be in cash.”

  “That figures,” Sam said, “but he's been removed from my suspect list, anyway. I was just calling to see how you girls are doing.”

  Indie laughed. “We’re just about to go into Minnie Mouse's house. Don't you wish you were here with us, Daddy?”

  “I sure do,” Sam said. “It'd beat the heck out of what I'm doing. You got those guys under control, I take it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Kenzie was up till past eleven last night, with all that sugar in her system. I warned them that if they do that again, they are the ones who are going to have to stay up and deal with her. I think that scared them worse than anything else they've ever seen.”

  Sam chuckled. “That'd do it for me. I have enough trouble keeping up with her when she isn't bouncing off the walls.”

  “Just a minute, she wants to talk to you.” Sam grinned, and suddenly Kenzie's voice came through the phone.

  “Daddy! Guess what! I got to drive a car!”

  “You did? Wow, that's awesome! Did you run over anybody?”

  “No, silly! They got special cars for little kids to drive, and I got to drive one with Mommy and Jennifer.”

  “That's so cool,” Sam said. “If I was there, you could drive me around.”

  “Okay, she handed the phone back,” Indie said. “Kemzie is still in hyper mode, and someone is going to pay for it!” She and Sam talked for another couple of minutes, and then he let her go so that she could keep up with Kenzie. As he hung up the phone, it occurred to him that he was feeling just a little bit lost while they were gone.

  Sam continued to drive down the street, and found himself wondering what to do next. His investigation wasn't going anywhere fast, and the only real leads he’d thought he had seemed to be nonexistent.

  He thought about Charlie again, and that made him wonder about Carlos's girlfriend. If he could identify her, then it was just possible that she might have some idea who would want him dead. If Sam was right, her husband or boyfriend might be the most logical suspect. Unfortunately, Charlie didn't know who she was, so tracking her down was not going to be easy.

  Sam headed back toward Carlos's house. There was always the possibility that one of his neighbors had noticed the woman coming or going. He pulled up there a few moments later and saw that the yellow crime scene tape was still stretched across the front door.

  Sam got out of the Corvette, grabbing his cane, and looked around the neighboring houses. The elderly couple was out on their front porch, so he decided to start with them.

  Surprisingly, they recognized him instantly. The old man slowly got to his feet and held out a hand, and Sam shook it.

  “Mr. Howden, Mrs. Howden,” Sam said. “I was wondering if you would mind if I asked you a few more questions.”

  “Not a bit,” the old man said. “Cop a squat, young man.” He pointed at another chair on the porch, and Sam gratefully sat down.

  “I appreciate it,” he said. “Listen, I was wondering if you ever saw a woman going in and out of Carlos's place. We've been told that he had a girlfriend, but no one seems to know who she was. Any chance you might have seen a woman with long dark hair coming around, or a car that turned up fairly often?”

  The old man put his fingers to his chin as he thought, but Mrs. Howden let out a loud snort. Sam looked over at her. “Mrs. Howden? Do you know who she was?”

  The elderly lady rocked back and forth for a moment, then looked up at Sam. “I'm not one for gossip, you understand, and what people does is their own business. Just seems to me that they might be just a little bit more discreet, sometimes, but what do I know? I'm just an old woman.”

  Sam grinned at her. “Sounds like you've got some idea who this lady might be, am I right?”

  Mrs. Howden rocked for a few seconds more, then gave a single, curt nod. “Well, they made it obvious, didn't they? Whole neighborhood would know, if people just paid attention to what's going on around them. I mean, her a-traipsing back and forth, all hours of the day and night, just about anytime her husband gone off to work or out doing his own thing.”

  Sam's eyebrows went up and he leaned closer to the old woman. “Traipsing back and forth? You're saying you think it was one of the people here in the neighborhood?”

  “Now, Genevieve,” Mr. Howden began, but his wife waved a hand at him to shush him.

  “Hush, Kenneth, I'll not be silent. That girl next door,” she said. “Sometimes I can't stay asleep, and I get up in the middle of the night. That's one of the things that happens when you get old, you can't sleep right. Anyway, the first time I've seen her going over there, it was about four o'clock in the morning, but that was months ago. Since then, I've seen her cutting across their backyards two or three times a day, it seems like, all hours of the day and night.”

  Sam glanced over at Carlos's house, then looked back at Mrs. Howden. “How could you see her in the backyard?”

  “I didn't see her in the backyard,” the old lady said. “I could see her running from behind her house over to the back of his, and if you just look right between their houses, you'll see what I mean.”

  Sam turned around and looked and, sure enough, he could see about a thirty-foot gap between the two houses. Anyone sitting on the porch or looking out Mrs. Howden's front window would be able to see someone moving from one backyard to the other. The house she was referring to was the one where Sam had talked to the young woman, Marcy. He turned back to the elderly couple.

  “So, you think that lady, Marcy, was Carlos's girlfriend?” Sam asked, and Mrs. Howden gave him a toothless grin.

  “One of 'em, anyway. It don't take too many smarts to figure out why a young married lady would be sneaking over to the house where a single young man as good-looking as Carlos lived, now does it?”

  Sam grinned back. “No, ma'am,” he said, “I don't guess it does. Let me ask you this: Do you know Marcy's husband, by any chance? Would he be the type who might get violent, if he found out Carlos was messing around with his wife?”

  Mr. Howden shook his head rather emphatically. “Not Ronnie,” he said. “Ronnie Osgood is about as mean as your average caterpillar. Been more than one time I've wondered if he might be a little bit on the funny side, he's such a wimp.”

  Mrs. Howden was nodding her agreement. “Ronnie wouldn't hurt a fly, even if it was trying to hurt him. He's one of those real soft-spoken-type boys, the kind everybody else pushes around. That wife of his is one of them that pushes him, too. They get into fights now and then, and you can tell who wears the pants in that house, believe you me! It ain't Ronnie Osgood. If he ever caught her sneaking over there, the worst he might do would be to beg her to stop.”

  “And if she didn't,” Mr. Howden interjected, “he'd just put up wi
th it. He never did have any backbone, that boy.”

  Sam nodded. “Okay, I think I get the picture,” he said. “Maybe it's time I go and have another talk with her. If she was that close to Carlos, she might have some idea of who would want him dead.”

  He thanked the elderly couple and made his way down their front steps and across the street. When he knocked on Marcy's front door, she answered with the same bright smile she'd had on Monday, and Sam noticed her long brown hair. It could easily be the hair Charlie described seeing in the night.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “You're the private detective, right?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, showing his ID once again. “I had just a couple more quick questions for you. Is now a good time?”

  “Oh, sure, ask away,” Marcy said. Her smile hadn't wavered, and Sam had to wonder about whether she and Carlos actually had any feelings for one another. She didn't seem to be grieving, that was for sure.

  “Marcy, you've been identified as Carlos McAlester's girlfriend. I'm wondering why you didn’t mention that fact when I talked to you on Monday.”

  The smile froze, then slowly fell off of her face. Her eyes were locked on his, as she reached behind herself to pull the front door closed.

  “I guess there's no point in trying to deny it, is there?”

  Sam shook his head. “Probably not,” he said. “You can talk to me about this, or you can talk to the police, and they're probably going to want to take you downtown for that. Maybe we can avoid some unpleasantness for you, if you're willing to tell me what you know.”

  She swallowed hard. “It started about a year ago,” she said. “I mean, it was just a little flirtation, nothing serious, you know what I mean? Then it got to be a little more flirtation, and finally—well, you can figure it out. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, it just sort of happened. Ronnie, he's gone at work a lot, and he's not the most romantic guy in the world, anyway. I guess I was lonely, but I just hadn't really thought about it up until then. The whole thing got out of hand, and then I didn't know what to do.”