This time, we were armed with some new questions for Maureen. As expected, she wasn’t happy to see us again. In addition, as she led us into her kitchen, she made it seem like we had made a wasted trip over to her bungalow.
“I don’t know why you’re back here. I already told you everything I know,” Maureen said.
My brother shook his head. “Don’t lie to us. We know you left a very important piece out the first time we interviewed you.”
Maureen had a puzzled look on her face. “What are you talking about?”
Joe cut through the lying. “Maureen, we know you and Luke broke up.”
Maureen tensed up.
She tried to deflect and point the finger of blame elsewhere.
“Did you talk to Colleen? Because she’s the one you should be worrying about,” Maureen said.
I turned the table right back on her. “Who do you think told us about the breakup in the first place?”
“Isn’t it obvious why she told you that? She just wanted to deflect the blame from herself,” Maureen insisted.
“Which is what you’re trying to do right now,” I said.
Maureen shook her head. “No. I’m telling you, Colleen Conway is trouble. She’s the one you should be paying close attention to.”
I set Maureen straight. “Enough about Colleen. We’re here to talk about you. Now, about this breakup of yours—”
Maureen finally gave in a little. “Fine. Yes. Luke and I broke up. That doesn’t mean I killed him.”
Joe countered. “No, but it definitely gives you a motive for wanting him dead. You know what they say about a woman scorned—”
“For the last time, I didn’t do this,” Maureen snapped.
Joe remained calm. “Why are you yelling? That only makes you look guilty.”
Maureen’s temper continued to flare. “That’s it. I want you to leave.”
Joe put his foot down. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“This is my house,” she argued.
“And you’re a murder suspect,” Joe replied.
“Stop saying the word murder,” Maureen insisted.
“What’s the matter? Is it hitting too close to the bone?” I asked.
“I’m only going to say this one more time. Get out of my house,” Maureen barked.
“That sounded like a threat. Did you really just threaten a police officer?” Joe said.
Maureen became intimidated by my brother’s stare. She broke eye contact with him and grew jittery. Maureen was all over the map. She seemed to be unraveling right before our eyes.
As Maureen looked down, her silence really stuck out. As did her lack of response to my brother’s question.
Joe decided to call her out.
“Maureen, we’re not going anywhere. Now, answer my question,” my brother demanded.
Maureen responded in a completely unexpected way. She reached into her purse, pulled out a can of pepper spray, and quickly sprayed my brother in the face.
My brother yelled as the pepper spray got in his eyes. Maureen wasn’t done there. She pointed the can at me next, but I was ready for her. As Maureen went to try to spray me, I knocked the can out of her hands.
While that disarmed her, it also managed to ramp up her anger to a whole new level. Maureen suddenly bull-rushed me and slammed me into her cupboard door. That move managed to stun me long enough to allow Maureen to dart out of her kitchen.
As every bone in my body suddenly ached, Maureen took off down her hallway towards the back of her house. I took a moment to catch my breath then grabbed the can of pepper spray from the tile floor.
Across the kitchen, I heard my brother groan.
“Joe, are you okay?” I asked.
My brother turned on the sink and splashed some water into his eyes. He then wiped his eyes with a dish towel that was draped over the sink and turned to me.
“We can’t let her get away,” he said.
Joe grabbed the gun from his holster and darted towards the hallway. I followed right behind my brother.
Just before we reached the hallway, we heard a door slam loudly. As we rounded the corner from the kitchen and entered the hallway, we both saw that the bedroom door at the back of the house was closed.
Joe reached the bedroom first and tried to turn the doorknob. As we both suspected, the door was locked.
Joe yelled at the door. “Maureen, open the door right now, or I’m going to kick it in.”
My brother received no response from Maureen.
He gave her one more moment to respond. When she didn’t, he attempted to kick the door in.
TV shows and movies made it look easy. In Hollywood depictions, a detective was always able to kick a door in on the first try. It wasn’t like that in real life. That was especially true in my brother’s case.
Joe kicked the door, all right, but came up against some resistance.
My brother winced immediately as if he had just kicked a cement block. Even more, the door didn’t budge.
“Ow,” Joe yelled.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Joe gritted his teeth and let out another groan. “She must have slid something in front of the door. I’m not going to be able to kick this in.”
“So, what do we do now?” I replied.
My brother pounded on the door with his fist and tried to egg Maureen on.
“If you’re so innocent, why did you run from us?” Joe asked.
He received no response.
I shook my head, still in disbelief over the situation we found ourselves in. “I knew there was something shady about her.”
Joe kept his focus on the door. “Maureen, you might as well come out. You can’t escape.”
A prescient thought came to me.
I stopped my brother and whispered into his ear. “Actually, what if she’s making a break for it out the back window?”
My brother’s eyes opened wide. He whispered back to me. “You stay here. Be ready with that pepper spray if she comes out.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going after her,” he said.
Instead of going all the way to the front of the house and winding his way around to the back, Joe darted into the adjacent spare bedroom across the hallway and headed over to the window. Once there, he slid the window open, climbed outside the bungalow, and ran into Maureen’s backyard.
I waited nervously in the hallway, hoping for a peaceful resolution, even if I knew the odds of that were close to zero now. Then again, it never hurt to pray.
A few seconds later, I heard Joe’s voice yelling from outside.
“Maureen, you’re surrounded. Drop your gun and put your hands up,” Joe said.
Wait a minute. She had a gun, too? Oh, dear. Things were even worse than I thought. No wonder Maureen had been so eager to dart back into her bedroom. That was apparently where she kept her gun.
Before I had a chance to even catch my breath, my brother continued his statement.
“You’re under arrest for pepper-spraying a police officer,” Joe said. “But I have a feeling that’s not all you did. You sprayed me because you knew it was only a matter of time before we found out that you were the one to kill Luke Murphy, right?” Joe said.
I then heard Maureen’s voice reply to him from inside her locked bedroom. “I’m not going to jail. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life behind bars.”
“You should have thought of that before. Now, there is no escape. Face it, you’re going to jail,” Joe said.
Maureen refused to believe that. “No. This isn’t how it ends.”
“Maureen, drop the gun and put your hands up,” my brother demanded.
“This is all Luke’s fault. Why wasn’t my love enough for him? Why couldn’t he have just loved me as much I loved him? Don’t you see? He’s the scumbag. He got what he deserved,” Maureen explained.
“And now you’re going to get what you deserve. You can’t just kill a man because he
cheated on you. Now, drop the gun,” Joe argued.
“I already told you, I’m not spending the rest of my life in jail. I’m not doing it,” Maureen replied.
“I’m going to tell you one last time—drop the gun and put your hands up,” Joe demanded.
The tension was palpable. Things could get explosive at any moment. The desperation in Maureen’s voice gave me an awful feeling. My gut was telling me that she had no intention of dropping the gun.
At the same time, my brother wasn’t about to back down. Something had to give.
Then something did. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier, I heard a loud popping sound coming from the other side of the door. The noise was unmistakable. It was a gunshot.
I panicked as my heart began to race. Had Maureen just fired at my brother? If so, had her shot hit him?
There was no way I could stand idly by any longer. I needed answers, and there was only one way to get them. Instinctively, I darted towards the open window in the spare bedroom and went outside.
As I rushed towards the backyard, my heart was beating faster than it ever had before.
I called out to my brother. “Joe, are you okay?”
I rounded the corner and reached Maureen’s backyard, where I saw my brother standing in shock.
“Joe,” I said.
He slowly turned to me.
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
Joe finally nodded at me. “Yeah.”
“Thank God,” I said.
After receiving an initial jolt of relief from finding out that my brother was okay, my thoughts quickly turned to Maureen.
“What happened?” I asked.
Joe didn’t answer me verbally at first. He just approached the window to Maureen’s bedroom and stared inside. While I was completely confused, his face was filled with shock.
Once again, I asked my brother for clarity. “Joe, what happened?”
Joe took a moment then finally answered.
“She shot herself,” he said.
“She what?”
“I can’t believe it. Instead of going jail, she decided to commit suicide,” Joe replied.
Chapter Fifteen
What a crazy end to the case. On one hand, we had found Luke’s killer. On the other, with Maureen’s suicide, a much different kind of justice had been served. I couldn’t bear to look at Maureen’s body. It just seemed like too grim of a sight. The coroner arrived on the scene twenty minutes later and bagged Maureen’s body up in preparation to transport it to the morgue.
I still couldn’t believe how things had ended. For the second case in a row, there had been a violent conclusion. Was this the new normal? I sure hoped that it wasn’t.
My heart continued to race as I tried to process what had happened. I was in shock. As I went over what had happened, a number of things stuck out to me. Having been cheated on in the past by a previous boyfriend, I knew the pain Maureen had been going through. The awful heartbreak that seemed like it would never go away. How fragile it made me feel. How emotionally gutted it had left me.
It was natural for a woman to think about revenge after being cheated on. I had wanted to get back at my old boyfriend after he’d wronged me. The difference was, I never acted on my impulses. Maureen did so in the most violent of ways. She had become so obsessed with getting revenge that she couldn’t think straight.
From there, the rest was history. Knowing that didn’t change the fact that it was such a sad way for things to end. I kept wishing that Maureen had handled the situation differently, but she hadn’t. Now my brother and I were left to pick up the pieces.
***
After spending a few minutes deep in thought, I turned to my brother.
“That got out of hand in a hurry,” I said.
It turned out Joe wasn’t in much better shape than I was. As a matter of fact, his usually steady hand was gone. He looked as rattled as ever.
My brother answered with wide eyes. “I’ll say.”
“I guess it’s too much to ask for a simple open-and-shut case, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? That would be too boring for the universe,” he deadpanned.
“Boring has never looked more appetizing to me,” I joked.
Usually, jokes were able to cut the tension. Not this time. Joe remained as stiff as ever. To the point where I began to worry about him.
“Joe, are you okay?” I asked.
He let out a sigh. “I just can’t believe what happened.”
I nodded. “After what happened at the end of the last case, I know what you mean.”
Joe took another deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Anything I can do to make you feel better?”
He didn’t give me an answer.
I tried to appeal to his appetite. “How about I buy you a donut?”
Joe threw out another suggestion. “How about a drink?”
“I could do that. If ever there was a good time for a drink, it’s now.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Joe said.
“Good. It’s settled then. A drink, on me,” I said.
My brother turned to me with a look of gratitude in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Of course. You deserve it.”
He felt the need to clarify his previous point.
“No. I meant, thank you for always looking out for me. For being there for me. And for investigating this case with me. If I had been working this one alone, I’m not sure that we would have found the killer so quickly,” Joe said.
I smiled at him. “You’re welcome. You can always count on me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I was puzzled. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Just that I thought you were considering giving up sleuthing.”
“I was.”
“What changed your mind?” Joe asked.
“Ever since my near-death experience, I have been wanting things to go back to normal in my life. Then it occurred to me that maybe I’m not meant to live a normal life,” I said.
“It’s hard to argue with that. You’re the most extraordinary animal-shelter manager turned amateur sleuth I have ever met,” he joked.
I chuckled. “Way to flatter your older sister.”
“In all seriousness, it’s good to have you on board.”
I nodded. “Now, why don’t we get that drink?”
“Actually, now that I think about it, I might take you up on that donut first. After all, it’s not good to drink on an empty stomach.”
I laughed. “Once a donut-loving detective, always a donut-loving detective, huh?”
Joe smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
The End.
A Not So Merry Christmas Murder
Chapter One
“This is going to be the death of me,” I said.
My boyfriend, Daniel Jacobsen, thought I was blowing things out of proportion. “Don’t you think you are being a little dramatic?”
I shook my head. “No. I can see my obituary now. Hope Hadley, former actress and Hollywood, Florida, native, recently succumbed to the deadly frustration of trying to untangle Christmas lights. She will be remembered for her love of family, animals, and lemon tarts.”
Daniel chuckled. “Why don’t you take a break and have some eggnog? The lights aren’t going anywhere.”
“That’s the problem. These lights aren’t going to untangle themselves.” I groaned. “Do you know what the biggest mystery of all is?”
I was generally an even-keeled woman, but there was something about Christmas lights that pushed every one of my buttons. As I sat in the living room of my Spanish-style house, my frustration boiled over. There was no other way to say it—the box of Christmas lights in front of me was my nemesis. I had been fumbling with them for fifteen minutes, desperately trying to untangle them, and what did I have to show for it? Absolutely nothing.
It was funny. Putting up my Christmas tree was a breeze. I h
ad made quick work of that earlier in the evening without any scars to show for it. Traditionally, that hadn’t always been the case. In years past, I had spent an hour at the neighborhood lot, picking out a tree, strapping it to my car, then wrestling it into my house.
Finally, I became tired of going through the whole ordeal of buying a real tree and bought a fake tree that had lights and tinsel already wrapped around it the moment I pulled it out of the box. In twenty minutes, I could take the tree out of the box, put it together, throw a few ornaments on it, and I was completely done. Talk about a stress-free experience. Why couldn’t putting up Christmas lights be that carefree? Instead, it was the height of frustration.
While the box of lights held my thoughts captive, my boyfriend had other things on his mind. Namely, me. He gazed deep into my eyes, mooning at me. As we were still in the thick of the honeymoon period of our relationship, that was quite common. Normally, it was a welcome sight. At that moment, I was too distracted by the lights to give him the attention he was looking for.
That wasn’t the only topic on which our minds differed.
To Daniel, the greatest mystery of all boiled down to one question. “How did you get to be so beautiful?”
I remained focused on trying to untangle the lights. So much so that the depth of Daniel’s kind words didn’t truly register in my head.
Instead of acknowledging his compliment, I just plowed ahead with my rant. “No. How could Christmas lights possibly get this tangled while sitting in a box in my closet? It’s crazy. Every year they find new ways to get more tangled.”
The worst part was that my frustration was just beginning. After I found a way to untangle the lights, I still had to string them up outside. That would take some creative gymnastics on a ladder.
For the longest time, I used to make fun of people who left their Christmas lights up all year. I didn’t understand why people did something so tacky. Suddenly, the rationale behind that behavior became quite clear—to avoid situations like this. As I kept fumbling, I felt like downing a glass of spiked eggnog.
Sweets, Suspects, and Women Sleuths Cozy Mystery Set Page 22