Cozy Creek

by K M Morgan

  “You know what? I’m done with this conversation.”

  Tony got into his car and drove away.

  If it was possible, Tony managed to be even more secretive and evasive than he was the last time he and Chloe spoke. With Tony darting away, all hope was not lost. Chloe could still approach Andrew Brown and get his side of the story. That was exactly what she did.

  ***

  Tony Ryan had been very evasive regarding his conversation with Andrew Brown. Would Andrew be the same?

  Chloe approached the front of the club then turned the doorknob. Just as she suspected, Andrew hadn’t locked the door behind him after his meeting with Tony.

  Chloe was able to waltz right in. Once inside, she found Andrew Brown staring at the stage.

  “Andrew, how interesting to find you at work today,” Chloe said.

  Andrew was completely startled. He spun around, shocked to see Chloe behind him. At first, it didn’t seem like he recognized her.

  “The club isn’t open right now,” he replied.

  Chloe ignored his statement and went right at him. “I know the business world is cutthroat, but isn’t it a little too soon to pretend things are back to business as usual?”

  As Andrew looked closer at her, a glimmer of recognition came to his face. “Wait a minute. I saw you at the crime scene earlier. What are you doing here?”

  “I think the better question is, what were you doing here…with Tony Ryan…the afternoon following his mother’s murder? It didn’t look like you two were mourning Victoria’s death.”

  Andrew became outraged. “That’s none of your business. Get out of here before I call the police for trespassing.”

  “Go ahead.” She pulled out her phone. “I’ll call them myself. I bet they’ll have more questions for you than I, though.”

  Andrew remained defiant. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I? You were just making a business deal with Tony Ryan, weren’t you? What, did you offer to buy out his share of the club?”

  It didn’t matter what Andrew’s lips said—Chloe could tell from the look on his face that she was spot-on.

  Andrew tried to deflect. “I’m going to ask you one more time to leave.”

  “I’ll be happy to leave…”

  Andrew breathed a sigh of relief.

  Chloe continued. “When you tell me the truth. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Fine, you want the truth? Yes, I bought out Tony’s share of the club, for cash and the guarantee that he has a permanent slot on the schedule whenever he wants one. There, I told you what you wanted to hear. Now get out of here,” Andrew insisted.

  Chloe shook her head. “No. You told me the truth about today, which I already suspected. I want to hear the truth about last night.”

  “I already told the police, I was in my office.”

  “I know what you told the police. The truth I’m talking about is how Victoria refused to listen to your ideas. She wasn’t about to make any of the changes you wanted for the club. And there was no chance she was willing to sell her share of the club to you. Now here you are, with Victoria out of your hair and one hundred percent ownership of the club,” Chloe explained.

  “I know what it looks like, but I didn’t kill her.”

  “So, her murder was just a lucky break for your business plans, then?”

  Andrew got really angry with her. “This conversation is over.”

  He grabbed the microphone stand from the stage and looked prepared to use it as a weapon.

  Chloe took a few steps back. “If you’re trying to look innocent, you’re doing an awful job of it.”

  “Get out of here. Now!”

  There was a fire in Andrew’s eyes. Chloe could have grabbed the can of pepper spray from her purse and fought back, but that wouldn’t do any good. What she needed was a confession, and at this point, the only words out of Andrew’s mouth were going to be insults.

  Knowing she couldn’t push him any further, Chloe backed away and left the club. The minute she was outside, Andrew slammed the door behind her. Chloe then heard the sound of the door locking.

  When Chloe made it out to her car safely, she took a deep breath. That escalated far quicker than she anticipated. She knew with the next suspect, she’d have to have her can of pepper spray ready at a moment’s notice.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chloe was not looking forward to questioning this last suspect. To start, she’d had a very rough day of interviews up until this point. On top of that, now she’d be confronting Noah Bryant. When Noah called Hope Callahan up to cancel their date, Hope said he sounded shifty. The last thing Chloe needed at this moment was another emotionally unstable suspect. Still, she had to power through.

  Chloe pulled into the driveway of Noah’s rental home, approached the front door, and then rang the bell.

  Shortly after, Noah answered. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his voice when he spotted her.

  “Chloe. I’m surprised to see you here,” he said.

  “There are some questions I have to ask you,” she replied.

  “Is this about me canceling my date with Hope?”

  Noah had unknowingly given Chloe a nice opening. She decided to run with it.

  “Yeah. It’s all very confusing. I mean, last night you seemed so interested in her.”

  “A lot can change in one night.”

  That was probably the most understated thing Chloe had heard all day.

  “Very true. But what made you change your mind?” she asked.

  “I got a call this morning from a Hollywood talent agent. The guy had seen a bunch of videos of my sets. He said he wants to represent me. He’s flying me out west and getting me a bunch of gigs in Los Angeles,” Noah revealed.

  That was not the answer Chloe was expecting. “Are you serious?”

  Noah nodded. “So you see, it would be a waste of time starting something up with Hope when I’m going to be moving to Hollywood.”

  “If that’s your reason for canceling the date, why didn’t you just tell Hope that?”

  “I was still in shock. I’m still trying to process it. This is my big break. The one I’ve been waiting my whole life for.”

  Despite his answer, it still seemed weird to Chloe that Noah wouldn’t have just told Hope that on the phone. She didn’t have time to linger on that point. There were more serious issues to get to.

  “So you’re leaving town then?” she asked.

  “Yup. I fly out tomorrow.”

  “Does Detective Thicke know that?”

  Noah gave her a critical look. “Why would that matter?”

  “Because you’re a murder suspect.”

  Noah scoffed. “Not for long. I mean, I had no reason to kill Victoria.”

  “How about the fact that she threatened to ruin you?”

  “Do I look ruined to you? My career is on a better track now than it has ever been.”

  “You didn’t know that yesterday. Like you said, you just got the call from this agent a few hours ago. Last night, your only claim to fame was being a headlining act at Victoria’s club. When you rebuffed her advances in favor of being with Hope, Victoria was as angry as I’ve ever seen her, and you looked completely panicked,” Chloe said.

  Noah remained calm. “Yeah, for about five minutes. Then I realized her threat was ultimately empty.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Victoria cared about money more than anything, and no one made her more cash than I. If she gave me the boot, all she’d have left would be second-rate acts. What was she going to do, put Ben Harrington or Tony Ryan’s name on the marquee? They’d sink the club.”

  “You say that, but I think there was one thing Victoria cared about more than money—her ego. You bruised it more than anyone ever had before. I think she would have gone through with her threat. After all, she went through with her threat to fire Hope.”

  “I’m
sorry about that. Look, you wanted the truth, and I gave it to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to do,” Noah said.

  Noah then closed the door.

  Chloe couldn’t remember a conversation with a suspect that didn’t end in hysteria—until now. Noah hadn’t even raised his voice. At the same time, Noah seemed almost too calm. Murder suspects were never that easygoing. Had it all just been an act?

  Chapter Twenty

  Chloe figured at some point in her investigation, she’d run into Detective Thicke. As she returned to her car, she was proven right. Thicke stood there waiting for her, looking like he hadn’t smiled in days.

  Oh dear. This should be interesting.

  “It’s a cold day to just be waiting around at someone’s car,” Chloe said.

  “The cold doesn’t bother me,” Detective Thicke insisted.

  Why did that not surprise Chloe? The weather outside matched the detective’s chilly personality.

  This conversation was in serious need of lightening up. Chloe tried to thaw the detective’s icy demeanor.

  “That makes one of us,” she joked. “I’d much rather be at home right now sipping hot cocoa while reading a good book.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “I was just making a suggestion. You know how I feel about you interfering with my investigations,” Thicke said.

  “You’ve made that very clear. Except, here’s the problem with that. If I hadn’t ‘interfered’ with your last two investigations, there would still be two murderers on the loose,” Chloe replied.

  As much as he wanted to, the detective couldn’t dispute that. Chloe had saved his bacon twice in a row and was primed to make it three.

  Detective Thicke opened his mouth to answer, but Chloe spoke up again.

  “I thought by now you’d be working with me, not against me,” she said.

  The detective folded his arms. “Are you still insisting that your friend is innocent?”

  Chloe nodded. “Yeah, because she is.”

  Chloe knew this conversation could get out of hand if she let it. That was why she wanted to nip things in the bud. She was in no mood to get into another argument with the detective about Hope Callahan. They’d already done that and gotten nowhere. What Chloe needed right now was to get a break in this case, not to keep getting caught in the same conversational quicksand.

  She decided to bring up a new topic. “Now detective, it’s nice to know you’ve been checking up on me, but you’re wasting your time. You should be going after the real suspects.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t been doing that, too?”

  “In that case, do you have any new leads? You must have learned something. What about Isaac Hunter? He was sure in a hurry to get out of town.”

  “My deputies have been keeping a close eye on him. It seems he decided not to flee after all once you talked to him.”

  Chloe smiled. “And you tell me not to interfere with your investigation. Now, did you find anything else out?”

  “Not on Isaac. He’s kept a low profile all of a sudden.”

  “He sure went from one extreme to another in a hurry. Interesting.” She then switched gears. “By the way, Noah Bryant told me he’s skipping town tomorrow. He said some Hollywood talent agent is flying him out to Los Angeles.”

  “I’m going to need to have a talk with him about that.”

  “Have you been able to find out anything else?”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t share this kind of information with you, but since you were the one to call the station and give me the heads up, I’ll let you know that my deputies tracked down Leah Manning,” Thicke explained.

  “And?”

  “She admitted she’d lied about her alibi of watching reality TV then going to bed by midnight. She confirmed that she paid Ben Harrington a visit last night.”

  “Did she tell your deputy why she lied to you in the first place?” Chloe asked.

  “Apparently, she was worried if she mentioned that she paid Ben Harrington such a late-night visit only to get rejected by him, that it would make her motive seem even stronger.”

  “It does.”

  Detective Thicke nodded. “Unfortunately, she’s still insisting that she’s innocent.”

  “Did your team dig anything else up?”

  “As you suspected, my team found no fingerprints on the murder weapon,” the detective replied.

  “Of course not. The killer obviously wore gloves or wiped the prints off.”

  “Strangely enough, my team couldn’t pull any prints from the name tag, either.”

  “Actually, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “Really? It was Hope’s name tag. I at least expected to find her prints there,” Thicke reasoned.

  “Yeah, if she had committed the murder. But this goes to show she was framed.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “The killer knew the name tag would be perfect to frame Hope with. The problem was, by picking up the tag, the killer’s prints would show up on the tag, too. In order to keep that from happening, the killer had to wipe all the prints from the name tag so they wouldn’t be incriminated,” Chloe said.

  “That’s an interesting story.”

  She corrected him. “A true story. Either way, I guess you’ll need a confession then?”

  “Not necessarily. The evidence is still pointing to Hope being the murderer. That’s why I came to you.”

  “She’s not going to confess to a murder she didn’t commit,” Chloe insisted.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say. I came here because I was hoping you’d have turned up something to prove my hunch wrong. Unfortunately, you haven’t,” Thicke said.

  “Not yet, but I will. I just need a little more time.”

  “What makes you so sure that is what you need?”

  “We both have our hunches.”

  “I just want you to know the only reason I haven’t arrested your friend yet is because you helped me solve the last two cases. I’m going to warn you, though, I can only hold out so long before I go with my own hunch and put Hope behind bars,” Detective Thicke revealed.

  Chloe gulped.

  “Right. No pressure then,” she deadpanned.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It had been a long day, but not as fruitful as Chloe hoped for. She’d been racing against the clock ever since Hope Callahan had been named as a suspect. After Chloe’s discussion with the detective, the crunch was really on. Chloe wanted to pretend that the pressure wasn’t getting to her, but it was. Her friend’s freedom was at stake here. Chloe knew the answer was out there somewhere, she just needed to find it.

  The suspects weren’t making it easy for her. She figured that by now, she’d be able to eliminate at least one of the suspects, if not a couple. Instead, each one looked guiltier than the next. Cutting through the finger-pointing, twists, and outright lies to get to the truth was proving more difficult than she’d anticipated. At the same time, she knew she was just one break away from blowing this case wide open.

  That being said, Chloe’s brain was fried. She needed a break from this case. Sometimes it was best to take a step back and give her mind a rest. Then she could reexamine the situation with a fresh perspective later.

  When Chloe needed an escape, there was usually no better place to turn than to her mother. For a retiree, Amanda Cook had a lot of balls in the air. Amanda was a woman with a big personality. She had retired early from her career in cosmetics sales but remained as fast-talking as ever.

  Amanda wasn’t the kind of woman who took her retirement lying down. Her forty-hour work schedule became a forty-hours-a-week social calendar, filled with groups, clubs, and get-togethers that made her midsixties just as happening as her midtwenties were.

  With all the frenetic activity in Amanda’s life, she had little time to pay attention to hard news stories. That suited her just fine,
as she firmly believed that retirement was a terrible thing to waste, especially on things that didn’t bring her joy.

  Considering all that, Chloe had a good feeling the murder of Victoria Ryan wouldn’t even get mentioned during their conversation.

  “You’re not really investigating the Victoria Ryan murder, are you?” Amanda asked.

  What a time for Chloe to be wrong. Apparently, the rumor mill was alive and well in Cape Cod and had paid Amanda Cook a visit.

  “Hope Callahan is in trouble. I can’t let her go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit,” Chloe insisted.

  Amanda sighed. “Oh dear. How did you get to be so headstrong?”

  Chloe wasn’t sure what to say. That would have been a perfectly valid question were it not asked by the most headstrong person Chloe had ever met.

  “What can I say? I learned from the best,” Chloe deadpanned.

  Amanda was in disbelief. “Me? Nice try, but you’d never catch me sticking my nose in other people’s business.”

  Chloe had to call her mother out on that one. She raised her eyebrow at Amanda.

  Before Chloe had the chance to speak up, Amanda revised her statement.

  “Not in the business of homicidal maniacs, at least. Some things should be left to the police,” Amanda said.

  The last thing Chloe needed was a lecture from her mom. She quickly decided to change the subject. After all, she was visiting her mother to get away from this investigation, not to dive right back into it. Luckily, her mother was known for being easily distracted, especially when the conversation was about her.

  Chloe used that knowledge to her advantage. “So, I heard about your new initiative.”

  Amanda took the bait. She got as excited as a little kid. “Let me tell you, this is going to be a real game-changer. By the time your father and I are done, you won’t even recognize us.”

  “Those are some pretty strong words.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate actions. Our bellies have been fighting a losing battle against love handles for too long. It’s time we fight back, and we’re not going to stop until the scale has tipped back in our favor.”