Stormy Day Mysteries 5-Book Cozy Murder Mystery Series Bundle

by Angela Pepper

  I asked him, “How well do you know Trigger Canuso?” I quickly waved my hand as though erasing a chalkboard. “Scratch that. I promised not to ask you any questions. Forget I said anything.”

  “Trigger didn't do anything wrong,” Nick said, his voice thin and straining. “She was with me that day. For the whole day.”

  “Oh. I didn't know she was dating you, too.”

  His whole body tensed, and then he straightened up, puffing his chest visibly. “Who else is she seeing?”

  I turned and looked at Jessica. “Didn't you see Trigger around town with that big firefighter guy, Mitch?”

  She opened her mouth and made a sound like a record scratching.

  I turned back to Nick. “You know how rumors are. It might not be anything. I'm sure she's totally faithful to you.”

  “She'd better be,” he sputtered.

  “You mean since you're her alibi,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  I couldn't help but smile. I had this poor young man's number. Now I was extra glad for my choice of outfits, because I tucked my thumbs into the front of the armpits for my vest and took a wide stance. I'd never felt more like a private eye.

  “Nick, you should ask me about obstruction of justice,” I said with a cool, steely tone. “Ask me about the minimum sentence for lying to police in a statement.”

  His shoulders rounded, and his chest caved inward. “What is it?” He fidgeted with the dog leashes in his hands, switching them back and forth so he could wipe his palms on his jeans.

  Keeping my voice low and slow, I explained, “Here in Oregon, lying in a police report is considered a Class A misdemeanor, with a recommended one-year incarceration and a fine of over six thousand dollars.”

  “Wow. That's intense.” He clenched his jaw and flared his nostrils. I could almost hear his teeth grinding on this new information.

  “And she would know,” Jessica piped in suddenly. “Stormy lies to the police all the time.”

  I gave my best friend and accomplice a look that was part thank you and part seriously?

  Nick asked me, “Can you take it back if you made a mistake? Like a retraction or whatever?”

  “An uncooperative witness can become cooperative,” I said. “They do have some leeway about people making mistakes. Of course, if a person were to make a retraction, it would be better sooner than later.”

  He looked up at the nearest security camera again and tugged the dog leashes as he backed away. “Yeah. Good to know. Like for the future or whatever.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  We were driving back home when my phone started ringing. We had been talking about this new development in the case and how relieved we were that Colt might simply be taking the blame for his sister. Neither of us wanted to see the troubled young woman go to jail, so we weren't exactly happy, but it did make me feel less awful about turning in Colt.

  The phone kept ringing, and it was the special tone I'd given my store manager.

  “That's Brianna calling,” I told Jessica. “Can you answer for me?”

  She dug my phone from my purse and answered. “Hi, Brianna. This is Jessica. Stormy's driving.”

  She listened for a minute.

  “Oh, no,” she said with a groan. “That's got to be illegal or something.”

  While she talked, I had a tough time staying focused on the road ahead.

  “Can we get the video taken down?” More listening. “Of course I want to see it. Send me the link.” Jessica shot me a worried look. “Yes, I'll tell her.” She thanked Brianna and ended the call.

  “Do I even want to know?” I asked.

  “Maybe you should pull over,” she said.

  My phone dinged with the sound of an incoming link via text message.

  I pulled the car over to a rest stop and put it in park.

  Chapter 35

  SUNDAY

  “Let's watch it on my big TV,” my father said. “Make your phone do the thing.” He waved one hand expressively from his seat on his recliner. “The thing where it sends its picture to the television.”

  Kyle Dempsey jumped up from the couch eagerly. “I'll do it,” he said, elbowing me out of the way.

  “This must be what it's like to have a bratty little brother,” I muttered.

  My father shot me an amused look.

  It was just the three of us for dinner that night. Logan was seeing family again with his sister, and Jessica was at her mother's.

  I couldn't relax. Ever since my suspicions about Trigger had been roused, I hadn't felt like sitting around. I got up from the couch and went over to supervise Kyle with the TV settings.

  My father settled back in his recliner and kicked up the footrest. “Stormy, since you're up already, and so close to the kitchen, I could use a refill.”

  “Same here,” Kyle said without looking up at me.

  “Sure thing, Dimples.”

  My father snorted. “Don't call him that,” he said.

  “Everyone calls him Dimples. Even you call him that.”

  He gave me a very serious look. “But when I say it, it doesn't sound affectionate. You make it sound dirty.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  He continued, “You let him take you to a movie. That's right. I know all about it. I've got eyes and ears all over this town.”

  “Yes, Dad,” I said, channeling my inner snarky teen. “Dimples and I sat next to each other in a crowded theater. But we sat in the back row so we could kiss and grope each other the whole time.”

  My father frowned. This wasn't the reaction he'd been hoping for.

  “He gave me so many hickies,” I said. “But I gave him twice as many.”

  My poor father looked like he regretted bringing up the subject.

  Kyle looked like he might throw up.

  “Stormy, thanks again for coming with me,” Kyle said. “It's more fun to watch a movie with a friend.”

  “And thank you for not wearing that pink V-neck shirt again tonight. I wouldn't have been able to control myself.”

  He self-consciously straightened his shirt, which was a bright white T-shirt from a resort in Mexico. “I didn't turn on my full Esquire look today.”

  “Well, you look very nice, honey,” I said in a gravelly, chain-smoking waitress voice. “I'm sure some day a nice young lady will make an honest man of you.”

  He gave me two thumbs up. My father just shook his head and grumbled, “Still waiting on that beer.”

  I went to the kitchen and got the drinks, as requested.

  Kyle was a number of years younger than me. So young, in fact, that I had been his babysitter once upon a time. I had literally changed his diapers. That detail about our shared personal history was something Captain Milano liked to mention whenever the opportunity arose. Little did he know, he and my father didn't have anything to worry about. I appreciated Kyle Dempsey's good looks the way I appreciated a fine oil painting. Besides, age difference aside, I'd decided at a very young age that I'd never date a cop. The one exception I'd made for Tony had been a huge mistake, and I wouldn't make it again.

  There were over a dozen bottles of beer in the fridge. I took three out and popped off the caps. The beer was from a local microbrewery that my father's dimple-faced prodigy was a fan of. It was a bit too hoppy, and not much better than my father's cheap can of choice, but at least the label was pretty; the logo featured a stag standing majestically in front of Misty Falls.

  When I returned to the living room, both the rookie cop and his retired mentor were enjoying the video on the big screen.

  The video was what my employee had called me about the night before. It was security camera footage of myself and Jessica taking a dunk in the casino's water feature. It hadn't gone viral in the global sense. It certainly wasn't as share-worthy as a Korean pop song with an eye-popping video, or cats stealing dog beds from shame-faced dogs. But the footage had gone viral popular by Misty Falls, Oregon, standards, with over a hund
red thousand views and climbing.

  I'd already seen the video more than enough times on my phone, but the resolution was surprisingly good, and there was more to see now on my father's large screen.

  The video started with the scuffle between Michael Sweet and the security guards. There was no audio on the security camera footage, so Michael could have been yelling about anything. I'd been there, so I knew it was hate speech toward the Canuso family and other members of their tribe.

  On the left side of the screen, a dark-haired woman and her red-haired friend rose above the crowd, in front of the fountain. That was yours truly and her partner in crime.

  On the right side of the screen, the crowd parted to afford a perfect shot of Colt handing his jacket to a member of staff. The shot was perfectly framed and told a clear story without a single word. Colt's face was in profile when he sucker-punched Michael Sweet in the guts.

  A split second later, something spooked a few people in the crowd. And then others panicked in a chain reaction, bumping into more people who then realized they were hemmed in by other kids and families and subsequently panicked themselves. Individual people moved chaotically. But to the bird's-eye view of the camera, the movements became part of a larger pattern, not unlike dominoes toppling. It was a good lesson in crowd dynamics. The dance was almost beautiful in how natural it was, like a herd of animals responding to a predator in their midst. The crowd swirled, crushed, and rebounded.

  Meanwhile, on the left-hand side of the screen, where I could barely stand to look, the two women standing on the rock wall surrounding the fountain flew into motion. One at a time, they threw their arms in the air as though this was a choreographed flash mob. And down Jessica and I both went, into the swirling water.

  We flailed in the water for an eternity.

  “That's funny,” I said. “I don't remember being in the water for so long.”

  “They've slowed down the video,” Kyle said. “And added hippo noises.”

  “That seems a bit cruel,” I said.

  He turned up the volume on the TV. There was no sound from the event itself, but some clever person had added an audio track of what sounded like a wild animal watering hole in Africa.

  “That's an elephant,” my father said. “Hippos don't bellow like that.”

  “I don't think it's an elephant,” Kyle said. “It might be creature sounds from a King Kong movie.”

  “I know,” my father said triumphantly. “I'd recognize that horrific noise anywhere. When Stormy was a little girl, that was the same sound she'd make when she had to take a bath with her sister.”

  Playing along, Kyle said, “This must be the actual sound from the event that day. Of course. Look how perfectly the sounds match up to Stormy's mouth!”

  I knew when I was beat, so I took a seat on the couch and let them make fun of me.

  After a few plays of the video and more mockery, my father suddenly tilted his reclining chair upright.

  “Back it up,” my father said. “Hit rewind.”

  “There's no rewind,” Kyle said.

  “You know exactly what I mean, Kyle. Don't make me swat your smart butt with a rolled up TV Guide.”

  I grinned at Kyle. “That's not an empty threat.”

  “I know,” Kyle said as he used the controls on his phone to scroll the video back again.

  “Look at Colt's face,” my father said, pointing his finger excitedly. “You can see this very specific look come over him, even as he's mid-punch. I know that expression. It's regret. He's not happy about what he's doing, even at the moment he's doing it.”

  “You're right,” I said. “He regrets punching Michael immediately.”

  Kyle said, “A brief flicker of regret doesn't prove he's innocent.”

  “But don't you see? That's not the face of a man who stabs a guy repeatedly,” I said. “Colt lost control on Saturday, yes. He threw a single punch, but that was it. One punch was all the anger he had in him.”

  “Until he stabbed the guy.”

  “Michael Sweet was stabbed between twenty-three and twenty-five times. Plus some slashes. How long would that take?”

  Kyle blinked at me. “Is that a serious question?”

  I picked up the remote control and pretended to stab him, counting out the stabs. At twenty, I switched hands because my arm was getting tired. When I was done, I said, “That's a lot of stabs. When I'm making baked potatoes in the microwave, I stab them with a fork first, and it's a fair amount of work if you have to do more than one potato.”

  “Baked potatoes,” my father said, rocking his chair forward and getting up. He headed toward the kitchen, muttering about preparing baked potatoes to pair with our meatballs.

  Alone with Kyle, I said simply, “You guys can't charge Colt with the murder. He didn't do it.”

  “That's not my decision.” He took a long pull off his bottle of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If you're so sure about your friend's innocence, you shouldn't have called in the report about the blood stains on his shirt.”

  We both looked at the screen again. The video being projected from Kyle's phone had frozen on a single frame. It was seconds after the punch, when Michael had rolled forward, his chin over Colt's shoulder.

  I jumped up and ran to the TV. I pointed to the spot on the big screen, pressing through the soft buzz of static electricity floating on the surface. “What's that on Michael's chin? Is his lip bleeding?”

  Kyle adjusted the image, zooming in on the frozen frame. The image became pixellated, but it was clear to us that Michael Sweet's lip had been split during the altercation, and blood was present.

  “That's how Michael's blood got on Colt's shirt,” I said. “It happened days before the homicide.”

  Kyle took another long pull on his beer. His dimples had disappeared. “Wasn't it his other shoulder?”

  I pulled up a mental image of Colt Canuso leaning over to pet his dogs that day in Central Park. I could see the stain, but not which shoulder it was on.

  However, trying to remember what I saw gave me an idea. My employee had taken a photo of Colt early on Monday morning.

  On my way to the couch to get my phone from my purse, I bumped the coffee table with my leg. I didn't even feel the pain in my shin, though I nearly knocked Kyle's beer on the floor. He cursed and caught the bottle midair.

  While I pulled up Brianna's contact information, I quickly explained to Kyle what I was doing.

  We both waited in quiet excitement for Brianna to reply. Would she send me the evidence to exonerate my friend? I hoped she would.

  Chapter 36

  While we waited for Brianna to message me back, Kyle and I went over the basic facts of the case.

  Since it was Sunday, tomorrow would make the homicide two weeks old. Each day the case went unsolved, the chances of an arrest diminished. We reviewed what we knew, hoping to see new connections. Kyle had gotten a few more details out of Samantha to fill in the picture.

  Michael Sweet had woken up Monday morning at the usual time. His ribs were still bruised from his altercation with Colt Canuso two days prior, but it was only enough bruising to make him grumble and not enough for him to take a painkiller.

  Samantha got dressed and ready for her day. It was a regular Monday, so she would be meeting with buyer and seller clients, and checking on paperwork at the office downtown, which was owned by the real estate franchise. Before leaving the house, they bickered briefly over Michael taking the day off to play golf. It would cost them for the course fees as well as daycare for the baby, but Michael assured Samantha they were about to come into a windfall, and money wouldn't be an issue for long.

  They left their house at the same time, with Samantha heading to the office to meet their part-time assistant, Harper. Michael picked up Sophie's friend Quinby from the McCabes' house and then drove the best friends to their school. Next, he dropped the baby off at daycare, bragged about spending the day on the green, and then disappeared. He
didn't have a tee time at the course, so whatever he did that day, it had been planned.

  “Was he in communication with Trigger Canuso?”

  Kyle took a while to answer. “He didn't have plans to meet her that day. At least not any that were through his phone or social media accounts.”

  “But there was something going on with her.”

  Kyle winced, as though fighting an internal battle over divulging the information to me.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “It's all public anyway. Michael spent a lot of time on Sunday posting comments on some of Trigger Canuso's internet accounts. Telling her how cute she was, and what a fine young woman she'd grown up into.”

  “He was trolling her,” I said. “Trying to provoke a reaction.”

  “That's what I thought. She's got that crooked face thing, where one side of her head is smaller than the other. Poor girl.”

  “It's called hemifacial microsomia, and it's probably what made her tough.”

  “Getting beaten by her stepfather daily was what made her tough.”

  I was temporarily speechless. “What?”

  “The only reason Colt stuck around after high school was to protect his little sister. He's a good man, Stormy. He and his uncles opened the casino to help their entire community, not for their personal gain. If he goes to prison, I don't know what's going to happen. They took on a lot of debt for the expansion, and if Colt's not around to manage the enterprise, well...” He looked down at the label he was peeling from his beer bottle. “Things could go downhill out there at the lake.”

  “We need to figure out what happened that day,” I said.

  “Maybe the best-case scenario is this one goes unsolved.”

  I hissed, “Don't you dare let my father hear you saying that.”

  He yanked the label off the beer bottle, ripping it messily.

  We sat in silence for a minute. My father called out from the kitchen that dinner would be ready in seven minutes. I could hear the microwave whirring.

  No response yet on my phone. I sent Brianna another message.

  Kyle picked up one of the old magazines from the side table and leafed through it.