Flea Market Fatal

by Brianna Bates

  Twenty years old.

  Leafing through the rest of the documents, she found duplicates of everything. Or at least she thought they were duplicates. There was just one difference.

  Albert Switzer’s signature was on these copies. But it hadn’t been on the others.

  She covered her mouth with her hand and everything fell into place for her. She didn’t quite understand what all the legal mumbo-jumbo meant, but she knew what happened.

  She took her phone out to call Tyler, but before she dialed Cody started barking like mad.

  Missy stood and peered down her driveway. She didn’t see anybody or any cars. What was Cody barking at?

  And she knew that Gordon had come to kill her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Tyler, it’s me. Come to my house right away. I’m calling you back till you answer. I know who killed Switzer.”

  She hung up after leaving the voicemail.

  Cody was still going crazy inside the house. Missy wished she had forced the dog to come outside with her now.

  Missy tried Tyler again but it went to voicemail. She hung up and hurried to the light switch. After flipping it, the garage was again covered in darkness. She let her eyes adjust for half a minute, then stuck her head out of the gaping opening. Cody was pressed up against the screen of the back door but couldn’t get it open. She had barked so much she had gone hoarse. No wonder she went nuts every time she saw Gordon. He had killed Switzer which meant he’d probably kicked her during the crime.

  Poor Cody had been trying to tell Missy this whole time.

  Missy grabbed a tire iron off the rack. It had been her father’s and she’d never used it. Its weight surprised her and she wondered if she’d even be able to use it as a weapon it was so heavy. She peered outside again and didn’t see anything. She had to get inside her house. She knew Gordon wasn’t in there. If he was, Cody wouldn’t be smooshed against the door. The dog would have been attacking the man.

  If she could get inside, she could lock herself in with Cody and wait for Tyler to show up.

  It was a good plan. Now she just had to move.

  Missy got into a crouch like she was about to run the hundred yard dash. The house was much closer than that, but she planned to sprint the whole way. Tire iron in hand, she took a deep breath and broke into a run.

  And got about three steps.

  Gordon came out of nowhere and blocked her path. She ran full-steam into him. It was like hitting a brick wall. The collision forced the air out of her and she went down, hitting the ground hard. On the way down, she lost the tire iron.

  Cody was livid and scratching at the screen door, but Missy barely registered it. She did register the rough hands that grabbed her and Gordon’s knee that pinned her to the ground.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but his gloved hands closed around her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

  “You should have taken the documents to the police instead of getting greedy. When Tyler didn’t arrest us right away, I knew what you were up to.” Gordon squeezed and the pressure on her throat was horrible. “I knew you were going to blackmail us.”

  She didn’t understand what he was saying but that hardly mattered now.

  Choking, she tried to scratch his eyes or his face, but his arms were much longer than hers and he leaned his head back to stay out of her reach. She wriggled under him, but he probably had a hundred pounds on her, all of it solid muscle. He’d been a bodybuilder and best she could tell, he’d kept up with it even after he took on the more respectable mantle of attorney.

  She knew she was going to die, but then Missy heard a crash. Had Tyler gotten her voicemail?

  Missy heard Cody before she saw her. The dog had broken through the screen on the storm door and gotten out. Gordon’s hands loosened around her throat then let go completely as he tried to defend himself. Cody leapt through the air and clamped down on one of Gordon’s arms. The man screamed and fell away. Missy scrambled to find the tire iron, but she couldn’t locate it. Cody and Gordon wrestled in the dirt, the dog refusing to let go and Missy was afraid Gordon would hurt Cody, but then headlights flooded her yard and she saw Tyler jumping out of his cruiser with another man and she knew she was safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Missy examined the bruises on her neck in the mirror. She didn’t know whether to hide them or let prospective buyers see them. The injury might be off-putting, or it might garner sympathy from prospective buyers. Eventually she settled on putting a little makeup on.

  It was a warm morning, the sun burning off the early fog quickly. As she drove to the Tri-County Flea Market, she went over in her mind again everything that had happened.

  Twenty years ago, Loretta had convinced her husband to invest their money in some real estate scheme with Gordon Block instead of starting that machine shop with her father. Missy didn’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but according to Tyler there were some irregularities with it. Gordon had called in some favors to get his hands on the property. By then, it was rumored that Loretta and Gordon were already enjoying an on-again, off-again tumultuous affair.

  Over the years, Loretta and Albert’s relationship had continued to deteriorate. He knew or at least suspected her affair and reached the point of no longer caring, an attitude Loretta was perfectly content with. Why they didn’t just divorce, was anybody’s guess.

  But when Albert decided to strike up his own affair, some twenty years later, Loretta took hypocritical exception. At that point she convinced Gordon to doctor up new versions of the real estate deed and agreement, versions that did not include Albert’s signature. Though it was still unclear, at some point Albert became aware they were going to cut him out of the deal. He’d been despondent because he couldn’t get his hands on the original documents. Loretta had moved out and taken those things with her.

  But Albert had shown some foresight. He’d never completely trusted his wife and must have made copies of the originals when the deal was originally struck. It came out through Gordon’s confession that Albert had called them that morning, threatening to go to the police with what he had. He wanted to make sure that property was included in the divorce proceedings because he lawfully had an interest in it.

  Gordon must have arrived at the house a few minutes before Missy. Thinking ahead, Albert had hidden the documents in the cabinet on the off chance (the good chance, actually) that he and Gordon had an argument over whose was what.

  Albert knew Missy was coming to buy the cabinet and they had already agreed on a price, so this was Albert’s insurance policy. Missy now understood what Gordon had been saying when he had his hands around her throat. He and Loretta had suspected she had the documents and hadn’t gone to the police because she had plans to blackmail them for money. When they’d heard about her unofficially investigating the crime and looking at everybody except them, they figured this was her way of shifting the spotlight elsewhere so she could quietly work out a deal with them.

  Missy shook her head and looked at the dog that had saved her life. Cody sat on the passenger seat and wagged her tail. Missy gently rubbed Cody’s side, making sure to avoid the rib that Gordon had broken.

  They made it to the Tri-County Flea Market early. Missy had purchased a good spot from the organizer, pretty close to the door. She stood up her folding table and began setting up.

  She also knew why Switzer had called Mom that morning. Probably to apologize for reneging on his agreement with Dad to go into business with his wife and the attorney, who would later try to backstab him.

  ***

  “How much for that cabinet?” a middle-aged man with a goatee asked her.

  She rested her hand on top of it. “I restored this myself. It’s a great piece and the perfect place to store your liquor.” She gestured to the two wicker chairs next to it. “These go nicely with it. You could fit this cabinet into a corner and sit down next to it for a drink.”

  “How much?”

 
He was ready to buy. But what was he willing to pay? She felt the familiar butterflies in her stomach. No matter how many times she did this, Missy always got nervous at the moment of the deal.

  “I’ll give you four hundred for it right now,” came a new voice. “And the two chairs.”

  She looked past the man to see Tyler approaching. He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a t-shirt today. It stretched across his chest and showed off his pecs.

  Missy smiled politely, like she didn’t know Tyler, and gauged the other man’s reaction. His eyes darted from the cabinet, to her, to Tyler, and back to the cabinet while one hand absently rubbed his chin.

  Missy said, “How about five hundred for the set?”

  “Five hundred?” the man said. “That’s too much.”

  “Would you take four hundred?” Tyler smiled, winking at her.

  “I don’t know…it really is a nice piece of furniture.”

  The other man held up a finger. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

  She nodded pleasantly at him as he stepped away, presumably to call his wife or significant other to discuss the purchase.

  Tyler leaned in. “Having a good day so far?”

  “So-so. This cabinet would really be the game-changer.” She smiled at him. “I didn’t think you were a flea market kind of guy.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m mellowing out in my old age.”

  “Old age? Hardly. If you’re old, that makes me old, and that, Tyler Brock is a fact I am not willing to accept.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. It was so good to see him like that. It reminded her of old times.

  “So we have Gordon and Loretta pointing fingers at each other, of course. I think we got them both dead to rights.”

  “Thank God.”

  “No, thank you and thank Cody. I was looking at them because of the divorce and the dispute over the real estate transaction, but without the originals I didn’t have enough to convince the chief to make a move.”

  She smiled. It was over. Life could go back to normal.

  The other man still had his phone up to his ear as he came back to the table. “I can offer you four-fifty, right now, take it or leave it, that’s it.”

  She saw that Tyler was about to open his mouth to drive up the price, but Missy didn’t want him to go any higher. Four hundred and fifty was more than fair.

  “It’s a deal,” she said, shaking his hand.

  The man smiled and told his wife he’d gotten the cabinet and the chairs. Missy and Tyler helped the man carry them to his truck. After he pulled away, Missy turned to Tyler.

  “So.”

  “So.”

  “One thing I’ve been meaning to ask you…if you suspected Loretta and Gordon, why did you let them go to Switzer’s house?”

  He nodded. “That’s exactly why I let them. I wanted to watch them to see if I could understand what they were looking for. I thought Loretta was lying when she looked at the cabinet in your flatbed and lied…but I can’t arrest people based on hunches.”

  She almost said, You arrested my Mom on a lot less. But she decided to let that go. Mom had spent a night in jail but she was fine and it had really been her own doing.

  “And it was Gordon that trashed my house?” Missy asked.

  Tyler nodded. “They were looking for the documents you didn’t know you had. They wrote murderer on your wall to make the break-in look like vandalism instead of what it really was.”

  Missy smiled, so happy that Switzer’s murder had been solved and she could get back to normal life.

  “Now that you aren’t going to arrest me, maybe we could grab a cup of coffee.”

  He hesitated. “I’d like that, but…”

  “But what?”

  His shoulders didn’t quite slump. “I haven’t been able to really talk to you because we’ve been in the middle of this murder investigation, Melissa. But my wife…it’s complicated.”

  “She’s your ex, isn’t she?”

  “We’re separated, not divorced. We’ve been talking since I got back and we’re thinking about trying counseling.”

  “Oh.” Her heart sank. If that was true, why had Tyler come out here this morning to see her? His actions were totally inconsistent, which meant he was conflicted. The last thing she wanted or needed was a man whose heart was split.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you but things moved so fast when Switzer was killed. I…” He looked like he had a lot more to say. “I’m sorry, Melissa.”

  “About what?” she asked. “It was just a cup of coffee. I wasn’t asking you out on a date. We’re just friends, right?”

  He looked deep into her eyes, and they both knew she was lying.

  “Yeah, friends.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, until somebody honked a car horn. Missy realized they were blocking the parking space her buyer had occupied and this person was trying to pull in.

  She waved sorry and got out of the way. Tyler had turned the other way and now headed farther out into the parking lot. She stared at him for another moment. His eyes held her gaze and she knew, was absolutely certain, that he still felt deeply about her. But she wasn’t the kind of woman that broke up a marriage, good or otherwise.

  Missy waved goodbye and headed inside. Before she reached the door, she heard him call out:

  “Talk to you soon, Melissa.”

  Inside Cody was waiting for her. She rubbed the dog’s head with both hands and earned a big, sloppy kiss on the face. Cody started giving her a tongue-bath.

  “Thank you, girl.” Missy hugged the dog. “Thank you.”

  *********

  THANKS FOR READING!

  I hope you enjoyed Flea Market Fatal, the first in the Missy DeMeanor cozy mystery series. I’ve got plenty more adventures planned for Missy, Tyler, Cody, and Noreen so if you enjoyed this book, please check out these other titles as well:

  Flea Market Fatal (#1)

  Book Club Bloodshed (#2)

  Diet Club Death (#3)

  Scrapbooking Slaying (#4)

  If you have a spare moment, please let other readers know you enjoyed the books by leaving a review on Amazon.

  And if you’d like a FREE BOOK, please sign up for my Newsletter here.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Brianna loves mysteries, hunky men, and crafts, but not always in that order. She has long yearned to write a cozy mystery series but always struggled to find the time between raising children, trying not to blow up the kitchen, and taking care of her rescued dogs. In her fleeting spare time, she enjoys scrapbooking, reading mysteries, trying out new recipes, and binge-watching TruTV. She lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

  Feel free to tell all your Facebook friends about her books ;-)

  For more information, visit her website: www.briannabatesauthor.blogspot.com.

  ALSO BY BRIANNA BATES

  MISSY DEMEANOR COZY MYSTERY SERIES

  Flea Market Fatal

  Book Club Bloodshed

  Diet Club Death

  Scrapbooking Slaying

  MARLENE AMBROSIA, WITCHY WIZARD COZY MYSTERY SERIES (coming soon)

  The Once and Future Scream Queen

  FLEA MARKET FATAL. Copyright 2015 by Brianna Bates. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Edition: December, 2015

 

 

 
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