by Liz Turner
While he spoke, Jolene took a closer look at the bottles. “With permission from the judge and the prosecution, may I remove the bullets from these bottles?” she asked.
Gonzalo begrudgingly obliged.
Jolene inserted her finger into each bottle to retrieve the bullets. They were different sizes, but what intrigued her most were their textures. She hadn’t been able to confirm her suspicions until she felt the bullets herself. She looked down at her hands. Her right index finger and thumb were covered in a black substance while her left fingers were clean.
“Ah,” she said aloud. “I thought so. This bullet,” she held out the small object in her left hand, “is a bullet. But this one,” she held up her right hand, stained with black ink, “is the ball used in an old-fashioned pen to stop the ink from streaming out. It won’t take long to determine who might have owned such an unusual pen.” She paused for a moment, hoping she sounded confident. In reality, determining whose pen the ball had come from was a hopeless mission.
But Lucas Auen didn’t know that.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the courtroom’s audience began to stir. She turned to see Lucas Auen marching slowly to the front.
“I threw that bottle into the lake,” he said simply.
A loud murmur rushed around the room and people began shifting noisily in their seats.
“Order,” the judge said, scowling. “Please, Mister…?”
“Auen,” Lucas said.
“Please, Mr. Auen, explain yourself.”
Lucas ambled into the witness stand and sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped in front of him. The judge motioned for him to be sworn in as a new witness.
A clerk approached the witness stand, holding out a black leather Bible. “Please stand,” he said.
Lucas’s eyes widened, and he moved slightly backward, but he did as he was told, standing and placing his hand on the Bible.
The clerk continued. “Raise your right hand. Do you promise that the testimony you shall give in the case before this court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” Lucas said, nodding robotically.
Jolene approached after the clerk sat, thrilled her tactic had worked. “Mr. Auen, you threw this bottle into the lake to protect your niece, Lucy, after you heard she’d been arrested, correct?”
“No,” Lucas said dumbly, looking at the ceiling rather than Jolene. He seemed to be having trouble breathing regularly.
Jolene was taken aback. “You didn’t throw this bottle into the lake?”
Lucas squeezed his eyes shut. “I did throw the bottle into the lake, but not to protect Lucy.”
“Then why did you go to the trouble of creating fake evidence?”
“I did it to protect Rebekah, my wife. After I found out that Lucy was saying she committed the murder and threw the poison into the lake, I wanted…” he took a shaky breath, “I wanted to be sure that she was convicted. So I planted the bottle in case the real one couldn’t be found. They had to find the evidence where Lucy said it was, or they might not have arrested her. I couldn’t risk them finding out Rebekah was the one who killed Foster.”
Jolene’s jaw dropped. This was not what she had expected. She looked back at Lucy, who had gone white.
“That’s a lie! Why on earth would you say that?” came a wail from the back of the courtroom. A woman stood, her face beet-red. “I didn’t kill Foster!” she cried. “You have to believe me, I didn’t kill him! Why would I kill him?” She began to sob, and the courtroom exploded with emotion. Her cries escalated as the jury began to argue—nearly everyone having something to say about the latest development.
“Order,” hissed the judge, banging his gavel. “Rebekah Auen, you’re being held on suspicion of murder of the first degree. And Lucas Auen, you’re arrested for perjury until we come to the bottom of this fiasco. Court is adjourned for today. We’ll pick up tomorrow at nine a.m.”
Chapter 9
Spontaneous Murder
Jolene leaned against the exterior stone wall of the courthouse, sipping a soda.
“Holy cow,” John said, sidling up beside her. “Did you know Lucas was going to accuse Rebekah? I mean, how could you have—”
“No,” Jolene said simply. “I did not know.” Her mind was spinning, going over everything she knew about the case and trying to make the pieces fit together.
“It was Rebekah. Wow,” John said.
“I don’t know…” Jolene took a long gulp of her soda and tossed the empty can into a nearby recycling bin. “It doesn’t make sense to me. If Lucy was the one who stole the poison but never planned to use it on Foster, then it stands to reason that whoever did administer the poison to him was acting on a whim. They couldn’t have known Lucy would steal poison with some notion of killing herself. So it wasn’t premeditated the way most poisonings are.”
“So?”
“Well, what does Rebekah Auen want with murdering Foster? She certainly wasn’t angry at him for any reason we know of. She was actually probably grateful for him letting her and her husband stay there rent-free for a while. I just don’t get it.”
“Who would have been angry at Foster enough to take the first opportunity to kill him? Jacob, maybe?”
Jolene looked over to where Jacob consoled Lucy on the courthouse stairs. She sighed. “Do you think so? It’s possible. He had motive, opportunity, and it was his poison, after all. But…”
John nodded. “But he would never let things get this far with Lucy being accused. He would have come clean as soon as she was suspected.”
Jolene nodded, watching the scene unfold on the courthouse stairs. Jacob kissed Lucy’s forehead and wiped his finger under her eyes. He smiled at her, reminiscent of a parent trying to cheer up a child.
Another man came down the stairs from the courthouse. He was tall and had a shaved head. Lucy’s face lit up when she saw him, despite her tears. He hugged her gingerly and pat her shoulder. Jacob then turned to the man and shook his hand, saying something to him; the man waved a hand in the air, brushing it off.
Jolene sauntered over to the little group, the three of them turning to look at her as she approached. “Hello. You must be Colonel Wiesse,” she said. “We never got a chance to meet.”
“Yes. Hello,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “I can’t thank you enough for representing Lucy. We all knew she was innocent, but the law isn’t always fair.”
Jolene smiled and then laughed loudly, slapping her knee in exaggerated amusement. “What’s so funny?” Jacob asked uneasily, coming up behind her
Jolene feigned as though she had only just remembered why she laughed. “Oh, goodness. I’m sorry. I can read lips, and sometimes that’s a skill you can’t turn off! That couple over there,” she pointed inside the courthouse doorway, “just had the most ridiculous fight.” She tsked and turned to Colonel Weisse. “It was so nice of you to not say anything when Jacob asked you to keep quiet about Lucy taking that poison.” She stopped smiling, her gaze hardening as she watched his reaction.
He shot out his thumb and forefinger in the shape of a gun and grinned. “Ah…You can read lips! Very nice.”
“You care about Lucy very much, I suppose,” Jolene said evenly.
“I do. She’s been like a daughter to me.”
“It must have been quite frustrating to see her treated so badly by her uncle and removed from his will just for getting engaged to the man she loved. And it wasn’t like you had your own money to bequeath her. So what could you do?”
The colonel looked into the distance. He licked his lips. “What are you getting at?”
Jolene decided to just go for it. It was now or never. “You were angry. You knew about the poison. You knew Foster’s habits and how to ensure he got it. You stopped the will from being changed. You thought you were successful in it.” Jolene watched his face closely, on high alert for a weapon; she had a feeling he was ex-military.
<
br /> He sighed. “All right. I did it. I stepped out of line. But I did it for you, Lucy.” He turned to face the girl who was regarding him with shock and hurt. “I never thought they’d pin this one on you! If you were convicted of this crime, I would have turned myself in straight away. I swear, Lucy…”
But she had fled, with Jacob running after her.
The colonel started to follow them, but John stepped in front of him. “Do the right thing,” he said kindly. “Come with us and turn yourself in. End this madness for Lucy once and for all.”
The colonel hesitated, grimacing. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “I should have done that in the first place. But I just trusted things would work out okay for both of us.” He paused and sighed sadly. “Will you tell them to release Rebekah Auen immediately? I told Lucas that I’d seen Rebekah poison the cocoa. I wanted him to go forward with the information and take the heat off Lucy.” He offered a wry grin. “I never liked that woman.”
Jolene exchanged a look with John, and the two of them led the colonel inside.
*** The End ***
Now that you have finished my book, would you please consider writing an honest review? I would be most grateful.
Click here to leave a review on Amazon.
About the Author
Liz lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies with her husband Rick and Golden Lab, Abbie.
She's had a lifelong penchant for mysteries of all kinds. As a girl, she loved reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories before graduating on to Agatha Christie books. Figuring out who the culprit was always seemed to capture her imagination. Now she enjoys writing mysteries herself.
Not content to stay in one genre, she has written novels in mystery & suspense/romance and most recently - cozy mysteries.
When she's not writing she is hiking, camping and enjoying the great outdoors.
Sign up here to receive new book release notifications.
Connect with her on Facebook, or email her directly at
[email protected].
Visit her Amazon Author Page for the complete list of books.
Go to the next page to see a Preview of:
Left for Dead in Alaska.
Preview of:
Left For Dead in Alaska
A Jolene Park – Attorney At Law,
Cozy Mystery
Chapter 1
A Betrayal
Two bearded men in thick flannel coats, and one woman with long brown dreadlocks, all in their late twenties, crouched over a fast-moving stream surrounded by gray-brown grass and colorless shrubbery, the wind whipping across their faces.
The blond man’s face was leathery from wind and sun exposure. His thighs were cramped from crouching, and either his water-proof boots had sprung a leak, or his feet were sweating miserably. Nevertheless, he stayed focused, maintaining his balance in the freezing water. His eyes robotically roved over the gravel swirling in his pan.
The other man, with his dark brown hair and red beard, stepped out of the river and walked up the bank, taking a swig from a large plastic water bottle along the way. He rubbed his lips with balm from a tin he pulled out his pocket. Looking down at the tin, he wondered if it would be the only real metal he’d see on this whole long expedition. He offered the balm to the woman beside him with a grunt.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m going to head back in. We’ve only got about an hour of daylight left and I think it might snow tomorrow, so we’ll lose that time, too.” She began making her way back down the river bank.
“Teddy! Leah!” the blond man suddenly called out. “Oh my gosh…”
“What?” the woman, Leah, said as she quickly scrambled back towards the blond man—Jeremy. Thunder crackled across the cloudy sky. Coming to his side, Leah looked into Jeremy’s pan. The film of brilliant gold that coated the river pebbles seemed almost absurd. Standing in the thin dirty stream with him, her fiancé, Leah felt simultaneously shocked and relieved gazing at the colors shining in his pan. She shrieked, her voice disappearing into a clap of thunder as she hugged him. “You did it! We’ve found it! I can’t believe it!”
“Gold,” Jeremy boomed proudly. “Mark this spot, babe. We’ll come back tomorrow to stake a claim.”
From his position above them on the riverbank, Teddy, the dark-haired man, watched Leah and Jeremy hug and kiss each other. The couple then held their heads upward toward the sky, allowing the drizzling rain to shower their faces. The rain seemed to signify that their work for the day had ended.
Teddy’s stomach clenched at the couple’s unabashed glee. It was like they didn’t care if he partook in their joy even though they had agreed to share whatever they’d found. Granted, he had never truly been a part of their team in the first place…
He stood frozen, his mind spinning. What if they went back on their word? he thought.
The thunder roared again, the rain began to pelt down in full force, and Leah and Jeremy began setting up the markers.
Remembering something, Teddy’s fingers closed around the metal lip balm tin in his pocket. Abruptly, he ducked into their tent for his duffle bag and then resurfaced. “Congratulations, Jeremy!” he called out down the riverbank, though his voice didn’t carry over the rushing stream and thunder.
Jeremy turned, waving cheerfully, and at that precise moment, Teddy gripped the metal in his pocket, pulled it out, cocked an eye shut, and pulled the trigger.
Gunfire blended into the noise of the storm.
Click here to read the rest of: Left For Dead in Alaska
Other Books by
Liz Turner
Box Sets (Your Best Value)
A Mega Collection of Cozy Mysteries & More
A Collection of Favorite Cozy Mysteries & More
Dr. Hallie Malone Cozy Mysteries:
Murder-A Deadly Stew
Half-Baked Blackmail & Murder
The Sandwich Murder
The Bakery Truck Mystery
Murder at the Movies
Jolene Park – Attorney at Law, Cozy Mysteries:
A Deadly Con
Deadly Winnings
Left For Dead in Alaska
Cozy Mystery Romances:
Notes From the Mysterious “G”
Mountain Mayhem
Murder: The Missing Necklace
Dana Potter Cozy Mysteries
Small Town Corruption
Copyright © 2018 by Liz Turner.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout ©2018 BookDesignTemplates.com