Peanut Butter and Jelly Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 54

by Susan Gillard

  “The butter churn I found made us laugh instead of having to think of it as part of a murder scene,” Amy said.

  “We looked for furniture for you,” Heather said. “And found a huge thing that’s not going to it in my car.”

  “And we admired the autographs,” Amy said.

  They wandered over to the autographs again. It was still an impressive display.

  “They’re all there,” Amy said. “From the singer I don’t know to author I didn’t know until you told me about him.”

  “Who?” Heather asked. Her mind was elsewhere. She kept thinking about how strange it was that nothing was missing from the inventory, and she thought about how she wished Eva and Leila felt at home in their home again.

  “That Alan Wolfsmore guy,” Amy said.

  Heather looked at the autographs. “Alan Wolfsmore” was scrawled across the title page of the book like before, but something was wrong.

  “I have to call Ryan,” Heather said. “I know why Aunt Amelia was killed.”

  She dialed Ryan’s number and waited anxiously for him to pick up.

  “It has to do with the writer?” Amy asked.

  “Ryan, we need to have forensics come back to the crime scene right away,” she said into the phone. “That’s right. I figured it out. I know a place where the forensics team didn’t think to look, and with any luck, our killer didn’t think of it either.”

  Chapter 17

  “Mr. Clarke,” Ryan said. “We have a warrant to search for a book of yours.”

  “What is this all about?” Lyle Clarke said angrily. A burly employee of his that Heather would probably call a henchman was standing nearby.

  “It’s about catching the killer of Amelia Seward,” Heather said.

  She and Amy joined Ryan in Clarke’s office.

  “I thought we were past the point of you accusing me of murders,” Lyle Clarke said with a smile. “You know I would never do such a thing.”

  “We know a lot of things about this case,” Heather said. “Amy almost came up with the correct scenario without realizing it. This was a robbery all along.”

  “Nothing appeared to be missing,” Amy said. “Because what was taken was replaced with a fake. Or in this case, should I say a forgery?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Clarke said, calmly taking a seat.

  “It was almost a perfect crime, but the killer made several mistakes,” Heather said.

  “First, they committed a murder in Hillside when we’re on the case,” Amy said.

  “The other mistake was a big one,” Heather said. “The killer spelled the name he was forging wrong.”

  “What are you going on about?” Clarke asked, but he looked slightly less cocky than usual.

  “The killer broke into Aunt Amelia’s Antiques to steal the Allen Wolfsmore autograph. However, when he replaced the autograph with a fake, he spelled the name wrong. He wrote “Alan” with two As instead of “Allen” with two Ls and an E,” said Heather.

  “A fan of Wolfsmore would know the difference, but an average person could make that mistake easily,” Amy said.

  “And you think I made this mistake?” Clarke asked.

  “No. I believe you’re a fan,” Heather said. “We saw the copy of his book on your shelves.

  “It’s easy to be a fan of a famous author,” Clarke said.

  “He’s not that famous,” Amy muttered.

  “It’s also easy to be a fan of yours,” Lyle Clarke grinned. “You work so hard, and it shows. But it’s also obvious that you don’t have any real evidence against my employee. That’s why you’re trying to shake something loose out of me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Heather said. “We do have enough evidence to convict Charles Galloway. You see, he made another mistake.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He left fingerprints behind,” Heather said.

  “Call me crazy,” Clarke said.

  “Crazy,” Amy muttered, but not too loudly. She was still intimidated by the vile man.

  “But didn’t you mention that the crime scene was at a store. Isn’t it possible that he visited the store as a customer? And not as some sort of criminal like you are implying?”

  “That might have been possible,” Heather said. “If he didn’t leave fingerprints on the item that he replaced inside the store. He was very good about wiping his fingerprints off from the outside of the frame. But he forgot about wiping them from the inside behind the glass. That’s what I had forensics check last night after I realized the forgery.”

  Clarke drummed his fingers on his desk. It was obvious he was annoyed. However, he refused to display any outward sign on his face.

  “I can’t believe I hired a criminal,” Clarke said simply. “This is too shocking.”

  “But what I find so strange is that a man goes through all the effort of breaking into a store and robbing an autograph, and yet it’s clear that he has no idea who the person who made the signature is. He didn’t know enough about him to spell his name right,” said Heather.

  “That is unusual,” Clarke said. “Maybe he is simply a poor speller.”

  “Or maybe he was getting the signature for someone else,” Heather said. “Do you want to hear what I think happened?”

  “Oh, please,” Clarke said. “I find this all so amusing.”

  “I think he went to the shop to get the signature for you. At first, he tried to buy it, but when Amelia told him how much it cost he realized it would be easier to rob her. He cut the power to her building to turn off her alarm and entered her shop. He was in the process of robbing the store when Amelia caught him. He didn’t know that she was still in the store. He had to kill her to cover up his crime. Then he covered up his second crime of murder by trying to stage it as a suicide. He replaced the signature with a fake one so no one would realize a robbery had taken place and cause doubts about the suicide,” Heather said.

  “But he chose the wrong method of death,” Ryan said. “Because Amelia Seward was terrified of heights and would never have jumped off of the loft.”

  “It seems like you’ve cracked the case and uncovered evidence of Galloway’s guilt,” Clarke said. “Yet why are you in my office?”

  The burly man near Clarke flexed his muscles ominously. However, then a uniformed cop that had come in with them appeared. He carried the Allen Wolfsmore book in his gloved hands.

  “We found it,” the cop said.

  Heather nodded, and the cop opened the book. The title page was missing.

  “I think you lent Galloway your copy of the Wolfsmore book so that he would be able to find the right signature. You didn’t want to take any chances after he failed to haggle for the signature. This worked out for Galloway because then he was able to take the title page out of your book, sign it, and frame it on the wall.”

  “If he had this book as you say, why did he misspell the name?” Clarke challenged.

  “He had cut the power to stop the alarm system,” Heather said. “He was trying to do everything quickly by the light of a flashlight.”

  “I think I understand what happened,” Clarke said, spinning his own story. “Charles Galloway saw this book in my office and realized its worth. He must have stolen the book from me in order to commit this foul crime. I think I remember not knowing where my book was for a few days and just assuming I’d misplaced it. Obviously, there was a more dire reason.”

  The burly man nodded at this explanation.

  “But weren’t you providing an alibi for Galloway the night of the murder?” Heather asked.

  “I’m afraid I must have gotten confused with those names again. It is hard having so many employees with similar names Galloway. Calloway,” Clarke smiled.

  “Yes, I can see how that’s confusing,” Heather said, starting to brood. It was clear that Lyle Clarke was coming up with his own sequence of events to keep himself distanced from the crime. If Galloway remained quiet and Clarke tro
tted out his expensive lawyers, his version would hold up. However, Heather had one more potential way to trap him. She crossed her fingers that it would work.

  “And now it seems to me that you’ve stood here monologuing for quite long enough,” Clarke said. “I’ll fire this employee if he doesn’t go to jail. But I don’t see what else it has to do with me. I can’t help that he stole my book. But I can help recover the time you’ve wasted this morning by getting back to work.”

  “You don’t think I was explaining all this for no reason?” Heather asked.

  Clarke narrowed his eyes. That was what he was thinking.

  “While we had the warrant to search for the book related to the crime, we thought we’d search for the real signed autograph page of Allen Wolfsmore. I think we should have found it by now,” Heather said.

  She hoped that keeping Clarke distracted had given the uniform cops enough time to carry out the search warrant and find the stolen item. Instead, another cop came in shrugging.

  Clarke laughed, and Heather felt her cheeks flush with anger.

  “You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to leave something incriminating lying around, do you?” Clarke asked. “That is if I ever did anything incriminating. You know what a law-abiding citizen I am.”

  Chapter 18

  “I really thought we had him this time,” Heather said. She plopped onto her couch in dismay.

  “Well, if we ever find the signed Wolfsmore page in his possession we can link him to the crime,” Ryan said. “He won’t be able to display it on his walls.”

  “Every time we get close to catching this guy, he slips through our fingers,” Heather sighed.

  “What you did was still very important,” Ryan said. “Without you and Amy, we never would have looked into this as a murder. And Clarke might have told Galloway to steal the autograph, but Charles Galloway was still the man who strangled Amelia Seward. Thanks to you, he’s going to be behind bars.”

  “That is a comfort,” Heather admitted.

  “It’s a shame we didn’t realize the misspelling earlier,” Ryan thought aloud. “Hoskins made a mistake?”

  “It wasn’t really his fault,” Heather said. “The inventory just had the famous person’s first initial of their first name and their last name. He compared the autograph to A. Wolfsmore. He didn’t know who the author was so he assumed it was normal.”

  It felt strange to defend Hoskins’s police work, but she knew that this truly wasn’t his fault. Many of the other officers would have made the same assumption.

  “Would you like to hear another interesting tidbit?” Ryan asked.

  “Of course,” said Heather.

  “You did most of the heavy lifting on this case,” Ryan said. “But I did discover something. It looks like Charles Galloway was the mystery man in the shadows who tried to recruit Bobby Hall to rob the store. It seems like he tried that approach before robbing the store himself.”

  Heather nodded. “Good work, Shepherd.”

  “Right back at you, Shepherd.”

  Lilly pranced into the room all dressed up for the afternoon. Dave and Cupcake followed her in.

  “Are you all ready to go?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Heather said, pushing the stress from the case away from her thoughts. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  The gathering at Eva and Leila’s was sweet and happy. The vase had been released from evidence so the room was “design complete.” However, Heather knew what really completed the room was having all of their loved ones gathered together.

  The larger room easily accommodated Heather, Ryan, Lilly and the animals, Amy and Jamie, Eva and Leila, and a table full of donuts. Amy was finally able to try the Peanut Butter and Jelly Donut with a glass of milk and gave it her compliments.

  Eva smiled as she ate a donut and looked at the room full of friends. Heather joined her to see how she was feeling.

  “This is what it needed,” Eva said happily. “It feels like home again.”

  The End

  A letter from the Author

  To each and every one of my Amazing readers: I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me know what you think by leaving a review!

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