Midnight Mysteries: Nine Cozy Tales by Nine Bestselling Authors

by Ritter Ames

  The day passed quickly. It was fully dark outside and Sam had been home nearly an hour, holding dinner in the oven and debating whether to call Beau to check his plans. She was standing at the kitchen window, phone in hand, when headlights beamed across the driveway. From his expression as he got out of the cruiser and started for the front door, she knew it hadn’t been a successful afternoon.

  “Not a damn thing,” he said when she greeted him at the door. “Nothing useful to us, anyway. You can’t believe the stuff people throw away.”

  She stepped back. “Have a shower before anything else, then you can tell me about it over dinner.”

  Twenty minutes later they settled over plates of roast chicken with potatoes and veggies.

  “All we can figure is unless some dumpster diver got to the coverall right away, Keith somehow managed to take it off, fold it carefully and carry it home with him. In the minutes after the crime, Rico only saw a distraught man whose wife’s body lay in a pool of blood on the floor. He only thought about getting the guy away from the distressing scene so he had an officer drive him home.”

  “I’m trying to remember what Keith’s costume was,” Sam said, tasting the potatoes and thinking they could use a little more salt.

  “I didn’t see the outfit. Rico said he was some kind of ogre or troll or something. Dark clothing that was big and baggy. A balled-up coverall could have been tucked in under it to create a large belly.” He sighed. “I requested a search warrant for his property, but I’m not hopeful. He’s had plenty of time to get rid of it.”

  “But he probably wouldn’t have gotten rid of the rare book,” Sam suggested.

  “True. Tomorrow, I guess it’ll be time to start calling back the rest of the party guests. Most of them got by with just a few basic questions, but now we know more and can ask for details.”

  He looked so tired Sam took pity and settled him in front of the TV with a bowl of ice cream while she did the dishes. When she came to collect his empty bowl he was dozing in the chair. With a gentle touch on the shoulder she roused him enough to climb the stairs while she locked up and turned out the lights downstairs.

  On the master bath vanity Sam spotted her jewelry box and picked it up. Within a minute the dark wood began to give off its familiar golden light and she felt her hands warm. She set it in place and went to Beau.

  “Let me massage your back and shoulders a few minutes,” she said. “You look pretty achy.”

  “I am,” he groaned. “I think I’m getting too old for field work that involves climbing around a smelly pit in the ground.”

  She admired his muscular back as she ran her hands over the skin, resting them in place so the warmth imparted by the box could seep into him. A few minutes into the treatment he moaned with pleasure.

  “Be careful, you’ll make me feel way better and I’ll be ready to jump you.”

  “Big talker,” she teased, although the idea had its appeal. “You were falling asleep in your chair ten minutes ago.”

  She continued to massage lightly and when he rolled over and began to unbutton her shirt she didn’t complain a bit. Despite a long day for both of them, his kisses still worked their magic and Sam joined him under the covers. A half-hour later they fell asleep, blissfully entwined together.

  Sam slept so soundly she didn’t at first realize Beau had gotten up. She was surprised to see it was already after six when she heard him moving about in the bathroom. She joined him in the shower, reminding herself they hadn’t had nearly enough couple time recently.

  By the time she dried off and dressed and was rummaging for earrings in her jewelry box, his mind had gone back to his job.

  “After everything we went through yesterday, this case is making me crazy with the lack of hard evidence,” he said. “It looks like I’m back to interviews, which are frustrating because it’s so easy for people to lie. But I’ll review all the previous notes first and watch for contradictory answers. Someone knows something, and eventually they’ll mess up and give information I can use.”

  Sam smiled at him. “You’ll figure it out, honey. You always do.”

  He buttoned his uniform shirt over the Kevlar vest they all wore nowadays. “I know you think the killing is closely tied with the book—and I’m not saying it isn’t—but I think I need to go back to more basic motives. The marital problems between Keith and Darlene must figure in here somewhere. I’m going to talk to Alan Pritchard again. I wonder if Keith ever threatened him. For that matter, Alan may be the one person who would know if Keith had threatened Darlene.”

  “For a guy who was messing around with another man’s wife, he was pretty calm and collected when you talked to him before.”

  “He was. He’s definitely worth another conversation.” Beau strapped on his belt and left Sam to finish dressing.

  She stood at the bathroom vanity for an extra minute, resting her hands on the wooden box. It seemed this could very well turn into a day when she could use the extra energy and insight. If only the box could allow her to see one of those auras, or if she could spot invisible fingerprints as had happened on the first case where she had helped Beau.

  SIXTEEN

  BECKY’S WEDDING CAKE of pink peonies stood tall and beautiful on the worktable when Sam arrived at Sweet’s Sweets. The ombré effect was every bit as stunning as she’d described.

  “Couldn’t resist,” Becky said. “I woke up early thinking about this one and had to get here right away to work on it.”

  “Nice dedication,” Sam said with a smile.

  She looked through her own stack of orders. There was a princess birthday cake for tomorrow. Sam had three popular standards she could practically do in her sleep and this particular customer had chosen one of those. A football theme for a little boy’s party wasn’t due until Friday afternoon. With Halloween in the past and Thanksgiving in the future, there wasn’t much call for decorated cookies or cupcakes this week. Julio would concentrate on their seasonal specialty items, their signature pumpkin cheesecake, coffee cakes with loads of cinnamon and nutmeg and the apple-pear tart which had been a huge hit last year.

  Sam took a breath and considered her earlier plan to leave the store in the capable hands of her crew and take a few days off. Before she could mention it the back door opened and Kelly walked in, dimpled smile in place and curls looking freshly styled.

  “Hey, mama. How’s things over here?” She looked longingly at the tray of apple strudel Julio was about to carry out to the sales room.

  “Grab one quickly if you want it,” Sam said. “They won’t last long out front.”

  Kelly shook her head. “Nah, just wishful thinking. I’m trying not to outgrow all my clothes and it’s a challenge now that I have a man in my life and we’re eating out so much.”

  She held up her cell phone. “Thought I would pop over and show you some pics I took at the party the other night. If you have a minute.”

  “Sure.” Sam set her order forms down.

  Becky placed one of the darkest pink peonies on the cake and stepped to Kelly’s side to look at the photos too.

  “Okay, this is me and Scott right after we arrived. I got Ivan to take this one.” Indiana Jones and Marion stood in a posed embrace.

  “Now here’s the food table. I wanted to get your all-black cake recorded for posterity but I think the lighting wasn’t great. The picture doesn’t look nearly as good as it did for real.” She skipped past a couple more attempts at cake photos. “Oh, here are the guests arriving. I tried to get a bunch of them but with people I didn’t know I only took pictures of the costumes I liked best. Isn’t this blue Victorian outfit gorgeous? The lady told me she rented it from that vintage clothing place on Gusdorf Road. I would have loved to live back then and dress this way.”

  Becky murmured agreement.

  “Then we have the witch up on the stage…” Kelly flipped to the next picture on the phone. “Well, that’s when the lights went out and I didn’t get anything for awhile.
Wait, I think I took a few more after the, uh, after the lady died. It got a little chaotic and people were bored standing around waiting for the cops. Mainly, these are friends. Oh, yeah, here’s that fancy dress again.”

  Sam felt her eyes go wide, her heartbeat picking up.

  “I need your phone,” she said, grabbing it from Kelly’s hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  She caught a glimpse of Kelly and Becky standing in the kitchen with their mouths open as she dashed out the back door and got into her van.

  SEVENTEEN

  SAM FELT HER spirits soar. If she was right and there was perhaps an end in sight, just when everything had felt confusing and bleak. For a second as she started her van, a vision of the carved box went through her head. Could her handling it this morning have somehow helped?

  The beauty of a small town is the closeness of everything. Sam was at the costume shop on Gusdorf Road within ten minutes. When she showed the gray-haired woman at the counter the two photos, there was immediate recognition.

  “Yes, dear, this second one. It’s one of our nicer dresses.”

  The lady led Sam between racks of spangles from the 1920s and polka-dots from the ’40s until she came to a wall of 19th century items. The blue Victorian dress hung in the midst of the selection. A plastic bag attached to the hanger held a pair of blue gloves. On the shelf above was the hat that went with it, the one with the purple ostrich feather.

  The woman eyed Sam covertly. “I’m afraid I don’t have one like it in your size. This one, I’m sure, would not be a good fit.”

  “It’s all right, it’s not for me.” Sam took the hanger off the rack, verified it was indeed the same dress. She showed her identification. “The sheriff’s department has an interest in this dress, pertaining to a current case. Can you tell me if the woman wearing the dress in the photos is the one who rented it?”

  “Oh yes, I remember her well.”

  “Can you check your records and see when it was rented and when it was returned?”

  Sam followed the woman back to her sales counter where she picked up a paperboard box and lifted the lid. The receipt was near the top and she handed it to Sam. Amy Pritchard had used her own name and address for the transaction. It would give her an irrefutable alibi.

  “When Mrs. Pritchard returned it, was its condition as it is now? Was it dirty or stained at all?”

  “Oh, it was in perfectly fine shape. These vintage items often cannot withstand modern laundering methods so I use spot cleaning if there’s a small stain. I only have them cleaned under the gentlest of conditions. This one required nothing of that sort.”

  Sam looked at the dress carefully. It could not have been worn during a stabbing, so somehow it had been substituted for the ruined dress. “I’m afraid I need to take it with me—the dress, its accessories and the paperwork. The department will give you a receipt and will return the dress when the case is closed.”

  The older woman dithered.

  “Sheriff Cardwell can issue a warrant for it as evidence in a case but that will take time. I need for you to either loan it, rent it or sell it to me.” She delivered the news with a pleasant smile.

  The shop lady wrote out a receipt and told Sam she would like the dress back as quickly as possible. Sam walked out, happy to be able to deliver some hard evidence in the case, wondering how the next part of it would play out. The photos showed a subtly different skirt before the murder, but she still didn’t know where the substitute dress—the bloodstained one—had come from or where it was now.

  The short trip to Beau’s office had never taken so long. She made a sharp turn into the parking lot labeled “Sheriff’s Department Personnel Only.” This time when Sam parked in the department’s exclusive lot she didn’t feel too guilty. Carrying the bagged dress gave her the feeling of having a little bit of clout. She pounded on the back door.

  Rico came, looking puzzled even though he must have checked the peephole in the door first.

  “Where’s Beau?” she asked breathlessly, waving Kelly’s phone in front of him. “This is the answer!”

  Rico eyed the garment bag and the phone and blinked a couple of times quickly. “Um, well, he’s interrogating one of the party subjects right now.”

  “Is it Alan Pritchard?” She started toward the interrogation rooms.

  Rico nodded. He seemed torn between giving her free rein and asking for more details. “Uh, well, go ahead I guess.”

  A narrow vertical window gave Sam a glance into interrogation room one, where she verified it was Alan Pritchard sitting across from Beau. Pritchard sat forward in his seat, hands clasped on the table, looking earnestly at the sheriff. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. She shifted slightly, catching Beau’s eye, signaling she needed to talk. He didn’t look especially pleased.

  Beau let Pritchard finish what he was saying before he stood up and excused himself.

  “Sam? What’s so important?”

  They moved out of sight of the small window.

  “Look at this.” She brought up the pictures Kelly had taken. “Amy Pritchard before the murder… Amy after the murder.”

  Beau’s eyebrows pulled together in front.

  “The dress she’s wearing afterward is different. She changed clothes.” She held up the garment bag from the costume shop. “This is the after version.”

  He took the phone and paged back and forth a couple more times, a smile emerging. “Wow, Sam, good work.”

  “Giving credit where credit is due, Becky and Kelly helped me figure it out. Kelly told me Amy Pritchard said she’d rented her costume from a vintage clothing place.”

  He paced to the end of the short hallway and back. “Okay. Okay. Looks like Amy used the rented dress to establish an alibi of sorts. Most likely she returned the dress on time so she would have a receipt and a witness.

  “I need to keep working on him,” he said with a tilt toward the interrogation room. “Have Rico copy those photos off the phone.”

  She found Rico, who promised he would bring the phone back to her without erasing anything of Kelly’s.

  EIGHTEEN

  SAM SLIPPED INTO the interrogation room. Beau pulled out a chair for her and she noticed he’d draped the blue dress across the back of another, letting it silently call out for a reaction from the man across the table.

  Pritchard gave it a glance, nothing more.

  Beau restarted the conversation. “Go over it with me again, Alan. You were all set to leave your wife, and yet you agreed to attend the party together?”

  Pritchard had undoubtedly been over this ground before; he sent an impatient eye-roll toward the ceiling.

  “That’s right. Darlene and I had been seeing each other for nearly a year. We were both in unhappy marriages and we fell in love. We planned to make a new life together. I informed Amy about a week ago. She became distraught—why, I don’t know. She was no happier living with me than I with her. My wife is a few years older than I am and I suspect she’s reaching that desperation age, knowing it will be hard for her to find another man.”

  Sam wanted to laugh, or to slap him. The arrogance! She and Beau had met only a few years ago, and he was younger as well. It didn’t necessarily follow that a woman over fifty would be desperate without a husband. Really.

  “Even after that she wanted to attend the party with you?”

  “She insisted on it. She’d made quite a fuss over having coordinating costumes so we would appear to be a perfect Victorian couple. She said it was the least I could do for her. Of course, she somehow convinced Darlene to dress as a witch—the irony was not lost on me.”

  Beau gestured for Sam to pick up the blue dress.

  “Is this the costume your wife rented for the evening?”

  Pritchard gave it a once-over glance. “I suppose so. Though I have no idea why she would rent something. She’s got a closet full of old theatrical items from her Little Theater days and chests of fabric from which she could have easily made somet
hing. I suppose charging an expensive item to my credit card was meant to act as a sort of final blow. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a cruise or something equally extravagant show up next. She’ll have her little revenge on me, I’m sure.”

  “Did you sit with Amy during the play?” Sam asked.

  “Actually, no. I was near the back of the crowd. She got into a conversation with the best looking young man in the room and made her way to the row of seats nearest the stage.”

  “Where is your wife now?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised if she is at home baking my favorite cookies. She’s become remarkably loving since Darlene—” His voice broke, one of the few scraps of emotion Sam had seen from him yet. “If Amy had acted this way the past ten years there would have likely been no affair.”

  Rico tapped on the door and stepped inside to hand Kelly’s phone back to Sam. Beau stood and took the folder of photo prints from his deputy, speaking to him in a low voice. Sam wondered whether she should stay in the interrogation room or leave. While she waited for Beau’s attention she paged through the party photos again.

  “Oh, and Rico? Take this and have Lisa test it for bloodstains,” Beau said, picking up the blue dress.

  Alan Pritchard reacted. “Surely, you don’t think—”

  For the first time it must have dawned on him why Beau’s questions were leading in the direction of his wife.

  “I don’t form conclusions until I have all the evidence,” Beau said. “Sam? You have something for me?”

  Excitement flushed through Sam as she figured out exactly what had happened. She tilted her head toward the door and they left Pritchard alone in the room.

  “I don’t think there will be any blood residue on the rented dress,” she told Beau. “I had forgotten someone mentioning Amy Pritchard’s theater experience, but Alan just now confirmed it. And she’s an expert seamstress. Do you see? It all makes sense—Amy made a separate dress to cover the rented one. Theatrical clothing is often made with Velcro closures and easy methods to get out of something fast for quick changes backstage. She would have put on the theatrical version over the vintage dress.