by Donna Doyle
“No,” Troy said, surprised by the question.
“I think he feels guilty.”
Ollie Olivetti, feeling guilty?” Troy scoffed. “He beat up his girlfriend. Why didn’t he feel guilty about breaking her nose?”
“I don’t know. But something . . . I don’t think he wanted to kill John, do you? John must have gone over to complain about the noise and—”
“And Ollie shot him. Probably shot him as John was walking away. It rained on Friday. If that’s when he killed him, the rain would have washed away the bloodstains. So he shot him, and dumped him in the lake, figuring no one would find him.”
“He mustn’t have seen your car.”
“I wasn’t up here until Friday afternoon. John’s family said he came up here earlier in the week. They were probably the only two up here, John and Ollie.”
“But why was he staying at Mayor Truvert’s camp? Does that prove that the mayor is involved in some of what’s been going on in Settler Springs? The drugs, I mean. You said Ollie is a user.”
“You didn’t see the look on his face when I mentioned the mayor. We’re not going to shake him on that story.”
“But you do think that Mayor Truvert is involved.”
“Not in John Parmenter’s murder. I don’t see a connection. But the lab got fingerprints on the bike parts that were left on Mia Shaw’s porch and they’re a match for Ollie’s. That’s not the kind of charge that’ll put him in prison, but it provides a starting point. I don’t think Ollie will hold up well under questioning. He’s got a quick temper and he’s jumpy.
“But why? Why would he want to scare her?” Kelly asked, her mind still on the attempts to frighten Mia.
“The same reason he wanted to scare Carmela by slashing her tires and leaving that note in her car.”
“But the only connection is to Travis Shaw and he’s in prison.”
“Yeah . . .”
But when Kelly and Troy arrived at the police station, Leo nodded at Troy’s speculative suggestions. “I’m not saying that we have all the answers yet,” Troy said. “But there are enough pieces to start putting the puzzle together.”
“He’s going to have to answer why he was trying to scare Mia,” Leo said. “And Mrs. Dixon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s caught. But you and I both know that a dead rat in a mailbox and slashed tires don’t equal a murder charge.”
“I know. But if it gets him out of Settler Springs, that’s one for the good guys.”
“Wanna bet he says that he shot Parmenter in self-defense?” Leon asked.
“A seventy-five-year-old guy was a threat?”
“No one was there. John had a reputation for being cantankerous. The prosecuting attorney isn’t going to even try to pull in Mayor Truvert as an accomplice to anything. He’s going to have a hard enough time making first degree murder stick. He’s not going to go out on a limb and try to blame the mayor and the former police chief for trying to scare two witnesses to a different murder out of testifying.”
Troy knew that Leo was right. “But we get closer and closer to Stark,” he said.
“You and I both can figure that Mayor Truvert paid Ollie to scare Mia and Carmela because he wants his brother-in-law back as the police chief in town. There’s a trail that leads from Stark and the mayor to Shaw and now to Ollie. Neither Shaw nor Ollie is admitting anything and that tells us that they’re scared. When hard cases like those two are scared, we know that we’re up against something powerful.”
“So John’s death . . . it was just a—”
“It wasn’t meant to happen,” Leo said.
“And you’re probably right. Ollie didn’t go up there to kill anyone. He likely went up there to get out of town for a while because he wanted away from Destiny’s kids over the weekend. And we’ll never prove it, but he probably had been told he could stay at the camp where it wasn’t likely that anyone would see him. Except your minister saw the Jeep.”
“Reverend Dal!” Kelly exclaimed. “Can we tell him anything?”
“Yeah, why not? We don’t have a confession from Ollie, but we’ve got a lot more tying him to Parmenter than we had on your minister,” Leo said. “I bet he could use some good news.”
The Meachems were so relieved by the news that Kelly brought them that, the next day, they appeared in church, even though there was a guest minister preaching and Rev. Dal was still on leave. They arrived a little bit late, just as the service was getting started; baby Micah was asleep in his carrier and didn’t make a sound all through church, not even during the Passing of the Peace, when members of the congregation, many of them with sheepish expressions on their faces, came over to greet the couple. Rev. Dal was as gracious as if no one had ever suspected him of murder and Olivia accepted all the maternal advice offered by the mothers of the church. As they were leaving the service afterwards, Rev. Dal caught up to Kelly. “Thank you,” he said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You believed that I was innocent,” he said. “When there wasn’t much to cling to, and even my faith was showing signs of strain, that helped us.”
“Will you stay? Give the congregation another chance?”
“I want to,” he said. “Olivia wants to. We’ll have to think about it, pray about it . . . summer is coming. I think it’s been a long winter for all of us.”
That was certainly true, Kelly thought as she got in her car. It had been weeks when Lent seemed to have taken over, long weeks of endless doubt and fear, heightened by the dismal rainy weather. But summer was coming. There would be warm weather and picnics. There were the local festivals to look forward to. The re-enactors would be coming for the annual Independence Day celebration.
Maybe, one of these days, Troy would come to church with her.
On an impulse, she drove down Jefferson Avenue. Troy was out in his driveway, washing the Suburban, Arlo pounding on the rivulets of water as they trailed down from the vehicle. She beeped her horn.
Troy looked up, saw her, smiled, and raised the sponge in his hand for a greeting.
She waved back and kept driving.
Summer was coming. There would be runs along the Trail, and dinner at the Café. Maybe even Logretti’s again. There would be time for something besides murder. She was sure of it.
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More From Donna Doyle!
Love Kelly Armello? Pick up her other cozy adventures in
BOOK 1: Murder Wears a Mask
BOOK 2: Murder Casts a Shadow
If you enjoyed this Cozy Mystery you will be sure to love Donna’s other box set collections. Super cozy characters and marvellous mysteries all waiting for you…
Read Baker’s Dozen Cozy Mystery Boxset
Read the Molly Grey Cozy Mystery Collection
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