Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 1-4

by David Archer

  A tiny voice came from the phone. “Every word, Sam, and all of it recorded. We're driving into the estate now.”

  Sam put the phone back into his pocket, took the bag of money from her hand and set it back down in the safe, then closed it. He took Sheila Smith by her arm and walked her out through the house and into the waiting arms of Detective Karen Parks of the Denver Police Department's Homicide Division.

  “You're coming down to give a statement, aren't you, Sam?” Karen asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I'll be there shortly. I need to go see my client first, is that okay? I think I should be the one to tell him.”

  She nodded. “That's fine, I want to see you right after, though. And I'll see that he's released when you get there.”

  Sam nodded, and walked over to get into his van. He drove back to the jail, and the jailer smiled when he walked in.

  “I got a phone call from the prosecutor's office a little while ago, and they said to release Mr. Smith to you, Mr. Prichard. He's almost through processing, and will be right up.”

  Sam just nodded. “Don't tell him anything yet,” he said. “I think I should be the one to tell him what's going on.”

  “No problem, all we know is that the charge against him has been dismissed, and we're to let you take him out of here. He should be done in a just a few minutes.”

  Sam sat down in a chair and waited, and about ten minutes later, Jimmy Smith was escorted out of the jail. He saw Sam and broke into a huge grin.

  “Sam! You did it, man, you did it! I don't know how to thank you!” He reached out and grabbed Sam's hand, and shook it ‘til Sam thought it was going to come off.

  Sam finally got it back. “Look, Jimmy,” he said as they walked out the door into the sunlight, “there's something I gotta tell you...”

  “Well, first, just tell me who it was who did this to me! That's what I want to know more than anything!”

  Sam nodded. “Well, that's part of it. I did find out who really killed Barry, and who was trying to frame you for it, but I don't think you're gonna be all that glad.” He cleared his throat. “Jimmy—it was your wife, Sheila. She caught Barry bringing you a note from Samantha Harris, and lost her mind over it, and she hit him and thought she'd killed him, so she was trying to hide his body before you found it.”

  Smith looked shocked, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He tried to say something twice, and then managed to croak out, “Sheila...”

  “Yeah. She had it in her head that if she cut of his hands and his head, it'd make it harder to identify him, so she got an ax and chopped off a hand, but he wasn't dead, and he screamed, and—well, then she hit him in the head with the ax, and that pretty much did him in. She went ahead and cut his other hand and his head off, and then dumped the body that night out where it was found. I don't know where she kept his head and hands, but she planted them in the yard and sent the hairs off to Samantha to get back at you for your affairs.”

  Smith was just staring out through the windshield as Sam drove, and didn't say anything more for a long time. Sam brought him along to the police department so that he could talk to the detective, and gave his statement to another cop while Karen talked to Smith. When he was done, he drove Smith to his house.

  He parked in the driveway and let Smith out, then started to drive away.

  “Hey!” Smith yelled at him. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

  Sam stopped and looked at him. “What?”

  Jimmy managed a weak smile. “Hell, man, I owe you another fifty thousand dollars! Aren't you gonna come and get it?”

  Sam looked at him. “Mail me a check,” he said, and drove out of the estate. He had one more stop to make before he considered himself finished, and wanted to get it over with.

  He rang the doorbell and waited only a moment before Samantha Harris answered. “Mr. Prichard,” she said, seeming surprised to see him. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can answer just one question for me, Miss Harris, and then I'll go and leave you alone. You told me that it was Barry who called Jimmy Smith from your phone, and when I told you that Jimmy said it was you, you insisted that it was Barry. Trouble is, I'm quite certain now that you lied about that, and to be perfectly honest, I just need to know why. It was you who called Jimmy, wasn't it? Tell me why you lied to me.”

  She looked for a moment like she was going to get angry, but then she seemed to collapse into herself. She looked at him for a long moment, and then said, “Barry died at Jimmy's place, didn't he?”

  Sam nodded. “He did,” he said, “but it wasn't Jimmy who killed him. It was his wife, Sheila. She killed him because she said she caught him bringing Jimmy a note from you, saying that you wanted to start up your affair again.”

  The woman almost did collapse, then, and had to lean against the doorframe for support. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, God, I didn't know—I asked Barry to take the note because he said he was going to go and tell Jimmy in person that he wasn't going to sign. I never dreamed he'd run into her...”

  “But he did, and now he's dead. Why did you really call Jimmy that day?”

  She sighed. “I did call to tell him Barry wouldn't sign,” she said, “but I was gonna tell him I thought I could talk him into it. He never gave me a chance, though; he started yelling at me and saying I was the reason Barry wasn't listening to him. The truth was, I thought if I got Barry to sign, he might take me back, and maybe he'd realize how good we were together.”

  “So you sent Barry there to leave a note saying you loved him? That's all it was? And you thought you could get Barry to go ahead and leave the band, so you were trying to use that to get close to Jimmy again?” He shook his head. “You didn't mean for anything bad to happen, I get that—but in the long run, it was your selfishness that cost Barry his life, and took away the future he could have had. You're an amazing piece of work, Miss Harris.”

  Sam turned and walked away, ignoring the weeping woman who was shouting that she was sorry.

  He got home about three in the afternoon, and told Indie all of it. She was as shocked as he had been at the way it had all turned out, but she went with him to Stan's garage to meet up with the band. They were all there, fresh from Barry's funeral, just waiting after Sam had called them and asked them to get together, and he sat in one of the folding chairs and told the whole story again.

  Chris stared into space, Stan got angry and began to pace around, Candy just sat there, and Janice went and sat in the grass outside and cried. Indie went and sat with her for a while, and finally the two of them came back into the garage.

  “At least we know what happened,” Janice said, “and that means a lot, Sam.”

  “Yeah, man, it does,” Chris said.

  They sat and talked a little longer, and then Sam said he wasn't up to rehearsing that evening, so he and Indie went home to be with Kenzie.

  They sat in the dining room and played Go Fish and Old Maid with her for a little while, but Kenzie was more interested in playing with Samson, so they let her go. Sam and Indie gathered up all the papers she'd printed out on the case and put them into a file, and marked it “Closed,” then went to make dinner. No one was feeling very energetic, so they settled for tuna salad sandwiches and chips that night.

  They decided to watch a movie, and Sam said he wanted to see a comedy. He said life was too much sometimes, and he just needed a good laugh or two, so they found a movie that sounded good, and laughed themselves silly. By the time it was over, it was time for Kenzie to go to bed, and Sam and Indie went to bed only a few minutes later.

  Sam was too quiet, Indie said, so she put some effort into getting his attention, and a few minutes later it dawned on him that everything was alright in his world.

  The sun came through the curtains, which had been opened, and woke Sam around eight the next morning. He rolled over and saw that Indie wasn't there, so he got up and showered and went out to the kitchen. She was making omelets, and Kenzie was at the table. Sam p
ut his finger to his lips, and Kenzie smiled and did the same as he snuck up on Indie and grabbed her from behind, then began kissing her neck and ears.

  She squealed. “Sam!” she said. “Darn it, I've told you what that does to me! Stop it, or I'll sleep upstairs tonight!”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, but he let her go and went to sit at the table with Kenzie. A few minutes later they were all eating omelets, and laughing and talking normally once again.

  “So,” Sam said, “today we are going car shopping, but I was thinking that I already have one car too many, so I thought we'd trade off the van, and get us a family vehicle. I can drive the Vette as my personal car, and if I need the bigger car, you can drive it.”

  Indie looked at him. “Um, Sam—I can't drive a stick shift.”

  Sam smiled at her. “You can learn,” he said. “I'll teach you, and soon you'll be begging to drive the Vette! We'll just buy an extra car seat for Kenzie and keep it in the garage, for when one of us needs to take her somewhere in it.”

  Indie smiled, and seemed excited about learning to drive the Corvette, but she was more interested in what kind of car they were going to buy that day.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “An SUV, maybe, something with four-wheel drive, for the snow in the winter?”

  “Now, that might be a good idea,” Indie said. “I hate driving in the winter time, but four-wheel drive would make it a lot better.”

  “And an SUV would mean more room for grocery shopping and such. I think we're onto something, here. Let's all get dressed and ready, and we'll go.”

  Kenzie ran up the stairs, with Indie yelling at her not to run up the stairs. Indie went to change out of her nightgown, and Sam followed her and watched, his eyes roaming over her body as he smiled.

  She caught him looking. “What?” she asked with a grin.

  He smiled at her. “Baby,” he said, “I'm just admiring the view!”

  BOOK III

  1

  “I'm getting' married in the mornin'

  Ding dong, the bells are gonna chime!

  Pull out the stopper, let's have a whopper,

  But get me to the church on time!”

  Sam Prichard, private eye, loved to sing in the shower. Being a private eye was his second career, after his first one as a police detective was ended by a bullet that shattered his right hip and left him with a permanent limp, but to be perfectly honest, Sam loved to sing anywhere, which led to what he thought of as his third career, as lead singer for the band Step Back Once.

  Sam had been hired to locate missing lead singer Barry Wallace a few weeks earlier, but Barry turned up very dead, leaving the band without a singer. When they half-heartedly talked Sam into singing one of his own songs for them, it suddenly dawned on them that they'd found a new one, and Sam had done several gigs with them since.

  Most of the songs that Sam wrote, though, were more in the country music genre, and after listening to a few of them, the band had unanimously voted to go country and let Sam write their music. Since then, they'd been getting more gigs in country venues, and Sam was becoming a popular vocalist.

  The song he was singing in the shower that morning, however, had nothing to do with the band. It was because he and his fiancé, Indie, were planning to be married in just a few hours, and would be leaving for their honeymoon a few hours after that. He really was “gettin' married in the morning,” and he wanted to sing about it.

  The wedding was set for 10 a.m. at the nearby Baptist Church, and the reception for the three dozen guests would be held at the Holiday Inn's small banquet room. The catering was all arranged, the cake was ready, and Sam had spent a ridiculous amount of money making sure that Indie would have the wedding she'd always dreamed of, and then the honeymoon to go with it. He didn't mind, though; she was well worth it!

  “Sam, Sam,” his soon-to-be stepdaughter, Mackenzie, yelled through the bathroom door, “Mommy's got breakfast ready and she said you gotta stop singin' and come eat before it gets cold!”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Sam yelled back, “I'll be right out!” He rinsed the last of the shampoo out of his hair and cut the water off, then stepped out and dried himself quickly. Five minutes later, he was sitting down at the table, where Kenzie was waiting for him to help her with her scrambled cheesy ham and eggs.

  “What do you want, Sweetie?” he asked, and she said, “Ketchup! And salt and pepper!”

  He dutifully applied the salt and pepper, then squirted ketchup onto her pile of eggs in a swirly pattern that delighted her. When Indie set Sam’s own plate in front of him, he treated his to the salt and pepper, but let the ketchup slide; he wasn't a big ketchup and eggs man, he said when Kenzie asked him why.

  “Sam likes his eggs without ketchup, Kenzie. There's nothing wrong with that,” Indie said when Kenzie gave him an odd look.

  “But it tastes better with ketchup!” Kenzie insisted. “It just does!”

  “To you, it does,” Indie explained patiently, “but not to everybody. You don't like broccoli, but Sam does, and he thinks it tastes great, even though you think it tastes like dog doo.”

  Sam looked at Indie. “Dog doo?” he asked.

  “Okay, she's four, remember? I speak on her level on some things!”

  Sam nodded. “I gotcha. That's why you looked at me last night and said, 'I gotta go potty,' right? Because you were speaking to me on my level?”

  Indie laughed. “No, that was just plain parent-ese, and you speak it too, sometimes, lately! Comes with having a little one running around the house.”

  “Good point,” he conceded. “And worth it!”

  They ate their breakfast and talked about the upcoming wedding and honeymoon adventures. Kenzie was excited about their getting married, because it meant she'd finally have a Daddy of her own—her father had been a Marine who was killed in a training accident before she was even born—and she'd decided Sam was the one she wanted even before Sam and Indie had realized they were falling in love.

  Kenzie wouldn't be going on the honeymoon, however. She and their clumsy cat, Samson, would be staying with her two grandmothers— Sam's mother, Grace, and Indie's, whose name was Kim. The two women had met during a wedding planning dinner three weeks earlier and had become almost inseparable friends—which shocked Sam, since Kim was known to talk right out loud to her “spirit guide,” Beauregard, regardless of where she was or who was around. Grace had heard about Beauregard and suddenly admitted to a fascination with the spiritual. The next thing Sam knew, Kim was moving into a spare room at Grace's house.

  Beauregard had suggested it, they said, and both women thought it a grand idea. Sam thought they were both nuts, but kept his opinions to himself. The last thing he needed was to get Beauregard mad at him!

  In any event, when Grace suggested Kenzie stay with them during the honeymoon, the idea made so much sense that he and Indie were happy to agree. They had her all packed and ready, so Kenzie could go home with them right after the wedding. Kenzie was looking forward to it, because both of her grandmas loved to go shopping for the little girl, and with two weeks to have them all to herself, she knew she was about to hit the jackpot!

  Sam had given his mother some extra money, just in case, and Indie had warned hers not to tell the child too many stories about spirits and ghosts and other supernatural things. Kenzie was sleeping soundly every night in her own bed upstairs, and Indie didn't want that to change!

  Sam and Indie, on the other hand, would be on their way to Hawaii, where two weeks of fun, excitement, love and privacy awaited them. Indie had once confessed to Sam that she would love a Hawaiian honeymoon, and he'd called a friend who was a travel agent a couple of days later. The things the agent recommended sounded great to Sam, so he bought the whole package.

  Sam and Indie hadn't known each other as long as most couples who were embarking on such a lifelong journey. They'd met just seven weeks earlier, when Sam had stumbled into his first PI-type case. He was looking for a missing little
girl, and there were signs that her father had done something with her. The man was involved with an online drug ring, and Sam placed an ad on Craigslist for a computer hacker to help him learn more about the ring and what the man was doing. Indie had answered it by tracking Sam down, and showing up while he was eating lunch at a Taco Bell. During their conversation, Sam had learned that she had a little girl, and was currently homeless.

  Sam owned a big, empty four-bedroom house, so he did the only thing he could think of and offered to let her use one while she helped him on the case, which they solved together, bringing the little girl home safely. Sam liked having Indie and Kenzie around, though, so he offered Indie a job as cook and housekeeper, which she happily agreed to accept, since it came with room and board, including a room for Kenzie.

  One thing led to another, and by the time she'd been there three weeks, he had proposed—and she had accepted! The only one who wasn't surprised was Kenzie, who had asked by the third day if Sam could be her daddy. Indie had already decided that Sam was the nicest guy she'd ever met, and let herself think about the possibility, and the rest sort of just fell into place.

  Sam, for his own part, had noticed immediately that Indie was beautiful, and the more he was around her the more he thought she was the finest woman he'd ever known. That, plus the fact that little Kenzie had wrapped his heart around her within the first few hours he'd known her, and he was hooked. All it took was time for him to realize that he wasn't the only one fantasizing about their being together. He asked her to date him, but less than two days later he knew what he really wanted, and bought an engagement ring. When she said yes, Sam decided he was in Heaven.