by E J Cochrane
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Table of Contents
Cover
Synopsis
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by E.J. Cochrane
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bella Books
Synopsis
In the brief time since surviving her first foray into murder investigations, dog walker Matilda Smithwick has lost a girlfriend, inherited a spare house, taken on more business than she can reasonably handle in her current location, and sworn off any and all detective work. When her old friend and client Leigh Matthews begs Maddie to prove she’s innocent of the murder she seems to be the prime suspect for, Maddie has no choice but to return to amateur sleuthing.
Along the way to finding the real killer, Maddie comes up against Leigh’s hazy, alcohol-infused memory of events, the surly and unpleasant Detective Fitzwilliam and a list of potential suspects longer than most epic poems. Meanwhile, her best friend Dottie seems to be avoiding her (in favor of her irritatingly efficient new assistant), and an ex-lover returns to complicate Maddie’s life and her investigation.
Can Maddie stay focused long enough to clear Leigh’s name and stay out of danger?
Copyright © 2018 by E.J. Cochrane
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
First Bella Books Edition 2018
eBook released 2018
Editor: Ann Roberts
Cover Designer: Judith Fellows
ISBN: 978-1-64247-006-2
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Other Bella Books by E.J. Cochrane
Matilda Smithwick Mystery Series
Sleeping Dogs Lie
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist if not for a wonderfully supportive team of people who helped me take it from ideas to the page. The initial inspiration came from my dear friend Heather L. Mathes, but the plot was born over a series of beer-fueled consultations with my sisters Jennie Tyderek (my Knowledge Sherpa) and Heidi Krystofiak (my Professional Nag). They help me stay focused and keep me on track, even when my schedule gets less author-friendly than usual. There’s a small chance I could do this without them, but I really don’t want to try. Likewise, my partner (in the truest sense of the word) Sue Hawks somehow manages to silence my inner critic, lift me up, troubleshoot, problem solve and support me, all without losing patience. She lets entire weekends of potential fun pass uneventfully by while I do battle with words, and she never complains. I’m truly blessed. Thanks also to my brother-in-law Mike Tyderek, my Czar of Technology and Creative Violence. Not only did he save my laptop from its destiny at the bottom of a ravine, but he’s also like a walking encyclopedia of weaponry (traditional and otherwise). And Tom Scrip, ballistics consultant and weapons enthusiast, thank you for your patient instruction. I’ve barely scratched the surface of your teachings, but their time will come. As always, my beta readers took what I gave them and helped me turn it into something much better. Thank you Amy Cook, Kathy Rowe, Erin Dunn, Jamie Lee Winner, HLM, Lynda Fitzgerald and Diane Piña. Your feedback was invaluable. I’m deeply indebted to the best editor on the planet, Ann Roberts. Thank you for teaching me so much in such a short time, and I promise I’m working on that pronoun thing. Finally, to the amazing women of Bella Books, I’m honored to put my work in your hands. Thank you for all you do.
About the Author
In addition to teaching college English, E.J. Cochrane has had just about every job imaginable, including running her own dog walking company. When she’s not writing, teaching, walking dogs, or distracting herself with yet another employment adventure, she’s one of those awful people who enjoys running (and somewhere in her closet has the dusty collection of marathon finisher medals to prove it). She and her partner live in Chicago with their cats and an elderly plecostomus.
Dedication
For Heather L. Mathes—it was good living with you.
Prologue
Lindsey stepped onto her balcony, lit a cigarette and watched, fascinated, as the plume of smoke she exhaled swirled in the breeze off the lake. She didn’t know why she continued to smoke outside. Habit, she supposed, but Terry wasn’t around anymore to complain about the smell, and the kids spent more and more time at their father’s house. It was a quiet she’d have to adjust to if Ray won the custody battle. He was such a bastard. Even after Terry died, he hadn’t relented. She needed time to grieve, but he refused to give her even the tiniest break from attorneys and courtrooms. If anything he seemed to be taking pleasure in her suffering, like her current anguish was some sort of payback for ending their marriage all those years ago.
She took one last drag off her cigarette before stubbing it out on the railing and flicking the butt onto the pavement twenty stories below. She hoped Mrs. Snodgrass, the old busybody next door, wasn’t hiding behind her curtains, watching Lindsey and waiting to witness her latest infraction of the rules. That woman lived to complain about her. She probably got a kickback from the management company for all the violations she reported. Lindsey groaned at the thought of another fine she couldn’t afford. On top of the endless legal fees and the astronomical rent she had no money for. Now that she didn’t have Terry’s income to depend on, she wondered how many corners she would have to cut if she wanted to hang on to this place.
She supposed she should go back inside to the emails she’d been slogging through before Leigh’s surprise visit. Not that she’d minded the interruption. Anything was better than dealing with the correspondence she’d neglected for the past two weeks, and Leigh was so eager to please these days. She felt momentarily guilty about moving on with her life so soon after Terr
y’s death, though it was less a betrayal than her infidelity in the weeks beforehand, and it could eliminate her financial worries. Still, her recent activities with Leigh might raise some eyebrows, especially with the police, and since they had talked to Old Lady Snodgrass (whose favorite pastimes were eavesdropping and gossip) at least once already, she needed to be careful. She didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. She had to be patient, at least for a little while longer.
She knew Leigh had never gotten over her, and if their reconciliation stayed on track, she would be taken care of. Leigh made good money, and that kind of security was worth the potential backlash over her truncated widowhood. She would lose this place, she realized with a twinge of sadness. Even lovesick Leigh couldn’t be convinced to pay for the home she and Terry had shared. Remembering that Terry had also shared this home with her ex mitigated her sorrow considerably. A fresh start would be good for her.
Thinking she should remind Leigh of the importance of discretion, she reached for her phone and sighed when she remembered that she’d left it in the bedroom. She stepped back inside but stopped short when she saw a familiar figure standing in her living room.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you. I wanted to see how you’re handling your loss.”
“How did you get in?”
“The door wasn’t locked.”
She’d meant to lock up behind her earlier visitor but had decided to languish in bed instead, a choice she now regretted. “You can’t just barge into other people’s homes.”
“You’re not really in a position to make demands.”
The trespasser stepped closer, and she backed away, again wishing her phone was nearby.
“What do you want?” She feigned boldness, but it had no effect on her unwanted guest, who took another step forward. She now stood in the open door to the balcony.
“I want to give you a present.”
Reluctantly, she opened the manila envelope the intruder handed her. She read the typed note she found inside and gasped. “This is a suicide note. I’m not going to kill myself.”
“I can work around that.”
A surprisingly strong shove sent her back into the railing, and as she struggled to regain her balance, the note slipped from her hands, and a second, more forceful blow sent her tumbling twenty stories below.
Chapter One
Matilda Smithwick squinted in the bright sunlight streaming through her open Jeep. If not for her adopted Great Dane Goliath deciding that her sunglasses made a perfect chew toy (for the third time) she would have been fine, but thanks to his penchant for destroying protective lenses (which he always seemed to find, no matter where she hid them), she had decided to stop wasting money on them. Until she found an alternate way to shield her eyes from the sun or figured out how to turn his tastes to something more dog appropriate, she would have to squint and hope for the best.
Searing eye pain aside, Maddie had no complaints about the day. She didn’t know how, in late October, Chicago had been blessed with a sunny, sixty-five-degree day, but she would take it. Given the city’s contentious relationship with Mother Nature, by tomorrow Chicagoans could be buried under a foot of snow (making Maddie regret waiting to put the hard top on her car), but for now she would enjoy the remainder of the lingering fall.
Finding a rare parking space in the overcrowded neighborhood where Patrick Walker, her right-hand man and favorite employee lived, she pulled in and almost wished she would be there long enough to make this victory worth celebrating. But since she was in Lakeview only long enough to pick Patrick up, this minor and short-lived stroke of luck seemed more like a cosmic tease from whatever deity ruled parking in Chicago than an actual godsend.
“What are we in for today, boss?” Patrick asked as he hopped into the passenger seat and buckled up. He focused his blue eyes on her for a moment before sliding his sunglasses into place, causing Maddie to scowl briefly before leaving her glorious spot to the next recipient of the parking god’s benevolence.
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
Maddie blew out a frustrated breath. She so didn’t want to be squandering this gorgeous Saturday (possibly the last one until June) on a fruitless mission for real estate. Considering her entire lack of success thus far, Patrick had graciously agreed to join her for the latest installment of the hunt for a larger space to accommodate Little Guys, her rapidly growing pet care business. And even though it was partly the fault of his marketing prowess that they needed more room, she still felt bad dragging him away from outdoor fun to help her find the potential in a musty abandoned building.
“I think this place used to be a bakery. Or maybe it was a bank. Harriet sent me all the information.” It looked exactly like the information on every place she had already rejected. “I don’t remember much. This is probably going to be a giant waste of your time.”
“Or it will be perfect.” Patrick’s optimism fell on deaf ears and not only because Maddie, who was trying to merge onto Lake Shore Drive, wasn’t fully listening to him.
So far, the whole endeavor had been an exercise in disappointment and frustration, and she suspected it was for Harriet, her older sister and real estate agent, as well. Over the last month and a half, Harriet had shown Maddie no fewer than twenty spaces, all of them adequate in size, decent in price and not too far from perfect in location. She really should have found something by now, but not one of the places she’d seen had been what Maddie wanted. She couldn’t explain it to her sister except to say that none of them felt right. She knew from the second she saw the exterior and a sinking feeling in her chest told her the building was all wrong, but she still let Harriet take her inside to do the realtor thing, hoping the interior would change her mind. That strategy had yet to work, but by the fifth rejected building, Maddie had made a game of counting her sister’s use of the word “nice” to describe their surroundings. If nothing else, it distracted her from her growing annoyance.
Harriet showed no signs of losing her patience (a skill Maddie suspected she’d honed during her years of dealing with the indecisive public), but that just made Maddie feel worse about her lack of eagerness. In truth, she should have felt more enthusiastic that her business had outgrown its current home (and if not for a fear of growing too big too fast and failing, she surely would have), but a small part of her wanted to ignore the demands of her burgeoning pet care empire and devote her weekends to regular life. Things like yardwork and laundry, tending to her dogs and visiting her grandmother. But not dating. She wondered if her life would ever be that uncomplicated again.
“Is Harriet handling your new house too?” Patrick asked.
Maddie clenched her jaw and nodded as she downshifted to accommodate the timid driver in front of her (who really should stick to side streets—or public transportation—if he wasn’t willing to keep up with the vigorous flow of traffic).
“How’s that going?”
“Well, I have a renter now.” Her answer sounded clipped and harsh to her own ears.
“You’re not happy about that? I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“What I want is to get rid of it, but I can’t.”
Not long ago, she, already a perfectly content homeowner, had inherited a house from her former client. Technically, Howard Monk had left his home to Goliath, his beloved (and rather disobedient) Great Dane, but since she had been the only one willing to take Goliath in after Howard’s brutal murder in his own living room, she was now the unhappy owner of a grisly murder site. She couldn’t sell it as long as Goliath lived, and she couldn’t afford to leave it sitting empty, but she had less than zero interest in taking up residence in the place where Howard had died.
“But given my limited options of living in a house where I stumbled upon a murder scene or moving Little Guys to said murder house or leasing it so someone who doesn’t mind the gruesome history, renting seems like the way to go. Renting to my best friend and largest source of torme
nt, however, was not what I’d hoped for.”
“Ms. Hunter is your tenant? I thought she was strictly Lincoln Park.”
“She’s ‘grown tired of that element,’” Maddie explained in her best Dottie voice.
“She doesn’t object to living where her friend was killed?”
“According to her, Howard’s ghost will protect her as thanks for catching his killer.” Not that Dottie was the one who cracked the case, but the less recognition Maddie got for her naïve and foolhardy attempt at detective work, the better.
“I like Ms. Hunter a lot, but I can’t imagine being her landlord. That’s got to be, um, interesting.”
“So far she’s been quiet—a little too quiet if you ask me. I’ve tried checking in with her, but she hasn’t answered my texts or calls. I’m expecting an itemized list of her demands any second now.”
“You really think it will be that bad?”
Compared to her, Patrick had known Dottie for roughly a nanosecond, and he wouldn’t have to deal with her ridiculous requests, so of course he could indulge his hopefulness.
“I’m anticipating a stipulation for proper grass length or that she’ll want the whole house repainted by tomorrow in whatever colors are trending in interior design right now, or she’ll tell me her acute sense of smell can still detect traces of Howard’s blood so I’ll have to replace the floors.”
“Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
“She always does,” Maddie said as she slowed with the traffic approaching the end of Lake Shore Drive. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
She turned onto Sheridan Road and a block and a half later regretted her decision. Both northbound lanes had come to a complete standstill, a not uncommon occurrence on this short stretch of road between Lake Shore Drive and Rogers Park, the neighborhood where she lived and worked. Though it was too late to turn around, and she was too far from a side street to change course, she wasn’t worried yet. They’d been making great time, so she didn’t think they’d be late. Once the congestion—probably from some considerate driver trying to turn left right next to a moving truck parked in the right lane—cleared, they’d be on their way and meet Harriet with plenty of time to spare.