He breathed a sigh of relief. It was only momentary.
Kaitlin pulled out her set of handcuffs. “We’ve come to arrest you.”
Peter became outraged. “For what?”
“For the murder of Sid Harper,” Kaitlin replied.
Peter lost his mind. He started ranting and raving. “What? You have no proof.”
“I told you smoking would come back to haunt you. That’s a McSullivan’s in your hand, isn’t it?” I asked.
McSullivan’s was a brand of cigarette.
Peter still wasn’t following my logic. “Yeah. So?”
Kaitlin pulled out an evidence bag and held it up. Inside the bag was a half-smoked McSullivan’s cigarette.
“This was found in Sid’s driveway at the scene of the crime,” Kaitlin revealed.
Peter went into full denial mode. “Yeah, and? That doesn’t mean it was mine. It could have been Sid’s.”
I shook my head. “No. Sid has been smoking Terwilliger brand cigarettes for over thirty years. He wouldn’t touch anything else. Besides, of all the cigarette butts found around the scene, only one was a McSullivan’s—yours.”
“No. You still can’t prove that I--”
Peter was going to try to plead his innocence, but I wasn’t having it.
I explained my theory. “I’ll tell you what I think happened. The other night, you were nervous as you pulled into Sid’s driveway to kill him. As you got out of your car, you flicked what was left of your cigarette on the ground out of habit and didn’t even think twice about it. Then you broke into his house, stabbed Sid in the back with a knife you’d brought from home, and grabbed the Widmark case file from his filing cabinet on your way out. When you got home, you disposed of the file and the knife, thinking you’d gotten away with murder.”
Peter’s head looked ready to explode. “This can’t be happening.”
I continued. “Twenty years ago, everything was going so well for you. You had a wife, a daughter, and a great job. Then, thanks to Sid’s private-eye work, your whole life imploded. You lost everything and have spent the last two decades trying to get it back. Not only had you failed to recapture your old glory, but you hit a new low. Then, just as you were at rock bottom, you discovered that Sid of all people was dating your ex-wife. That was the last straw. You wanted revenge, and you got it.”
In a panic, Peter tried to dart towards the door to the diner. Although, even if he made it inside, I didn’t know what his plan would be. There was no way he could outrun Kaitlin.
Either way, before Peter made it to the door, Kaitlin pulled the gun from her holster and pointed it at him.
“Freeze,” she said.
Peter stopped dead in his tracks. He turned and stared down the barrel of the gun. That was when he realized that it was all over.
He let out a huge groan then blurted out all his deepest emotions. “Yeah, I did it. I killed him, and I don’t regret it for a second. I hated Sid. He took everything from me. The man ruined my life from top to bottom. He was the cause of all of my problems. But that wasn’t enough for him. He wasn’t satisfied until he’d put the moves on my ex-wife just to rub my face in it all. That was the final insult to my injury. I couldn’t let him get away with that.”
I shook my head, both from disgust and disbelief. “After all this time, don’t you realize that you are the cause of your own problems, not Sid?” I sighed. “You’ll have plenty of time to figure that out in jail.”
Chapter Twenty-One
With a confession in the bag and Peter loaded up in the back of a squad car, I could finally breathe easily again. I let out a huge sigh, as if the whole weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders. Although that was a gross exaggeration, with justice served, Sid could finally rest in peace.
Ultimately, there was plenty of serenity to go around, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. During the investigation, a mix of adrenaline, anxiety, and curiosity had bolstered my energy levels. With the case closed, exhaustion was now coming on like a sledgehammer. For the first time since I could remember, I no longer felt younger than my years. If anything, I felt every bit as old as the seventy-five years that I’d been alive.
While lacking in any form of pizazz, activities like water aerobics and tai chi looked more appetizing to me than ever. After chasing down a series of murder suspects, I’d had enough adventure for this lifetime.
That being said, the only activity I was interested in at the moment was a nice warm bath and maybe a glass of wine. Surely those things would make me revel in delight. While I was busy planning an extended period of rest and relaxation, my daughter was lost in thought.
I had no idea what was floating through her mind, but it didn’t appear to be good. Like a bandage being torn off, it would be best to operate swiftly rather than to delay.
“Honey, are you okay?” I said.
She turned to me, bursting with emotions. I wasn’t prepared for that. I’d grown accustomed to her being tight lipped and detached, especially when it came to her job. Yet, right then, her heart was on her sleeve. “Thank you.”
The case may have been squarely in the rearview mirror, but a new mystery was afoot, and I was determined to solve it.
“Of course. I wanted Sid to get the justice he deserved,” I said. “Is there something else going on?”
My gentle prodding yielded substantial results.
“No. I mean, thank you for everything. For being such a good mother, for being so supportive of me…for always being there for me.”
A rush of emotions swelled inside me. My heart even skipped a beat as those touching words washed over me. That was the sweetest thing my daughter had ever said to me. Sentiment like that was the kind of thing every mother craved to hear, and that could never be said too much or often. I was so overwhelmed by her statement that my eyes began welling up.
Something like that would have blown me away no matter when it was said, but I couldn’t help but draw a blank wondering why she decided to reveal that to me now.
“Dear, I love you. I always have, and I always will. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
She looked at me with complete confidence in her eyes. “I know.”
My curiosity kept nagging at me with the same question that I finally refused to ignore any longer. “Forgive me for asking, but where is all this coming from?”
The crux of my bafflement was that while my daughter’s words were heartfelt and touching, it was uncharacteristic, even bordering on unheard of for them to be coming out of her mouth. Trust me, I wasn’t complaining. I’d been waiting to hear those exact words, or something similar for years, so long that I’d almost given up on it ever happening. So naturally, at the oddest time, it happened now. That was why I was hoping for an explanation.
“It all just kind of hit me at once, how fleeting life is. How you can lose those closest to you in the blink of an eye. I know how strange that must sound, coming from me. I mean, I’ve dealt with my fair share of homicides in the past, but they were different. Those cases I could remain detached from. I kept my distance because they involved strangers.”
I knew what she was getting at now. “This one hit you close to home.”
“Exactly. It made me realize how important it is to appreciate you while you’re here, because one day, hopefully far in the future, you won’t be. That’s why I want to treasure the moments I have with you.”
The emotions poured out of Kaitlin like a raging river that had broken through a dam. They’d been bottled up for so long that it was no wonder they were bursting out of her in such quick succession now.
It was impossible to keep a smile from my face. “I couldn’t agree more. I love you too.”
“This is more than love. Mom, you’re all I have.”
She was spot on there as well, which reminded me of a crucial point that I’d planned on bringing up with her.
“Now that you mention it, I’m hoping we can change that.”
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to go over with you. I think it’s really important for you to start putting yourself out there, more now than ever. It’s not too late to fall in love, settle down, or even start a family. But the thing is, you have to put yourself out there.”
“It’s just that my job--”
I knew where she was going with her sentence, which was exactly why I stopped her. I’d heard enough about her job—too much, even. While she was great at it, it wouldn’t keep her warm at night. If anything, she’d be lucky if it didn’t kill her.
I tried to be a little more diplomatic with my answer. “I know, your job comes first. But your love life shouldn’t come last. The fact is, your job isn’t going anywhere, but your time to find love is running out. Do you really want to grow old with only your police badge as company?”
When I’d brought up this topic in the past, she’d always shut me down or changed the subject. This time, that didn’t happen. She listened carefully, slowly absorbing each word. I saw a different look in her eyes as I let her know how I felt.
Much to my delight, she actually seemed to be warming up to the idea of finally putting her love life first.
“Okay.”
After pouring my heart out, I expected more than just a one-word answer. I also didn’t want her to just say yes in a halfhearted way to get me off of her back. It was important that she meant it. I could see that she had more to say, but she was having difficulty finding the right words.
I tried to push her along. “Okay?”
Like all big life decisions, she figured it was best discussed while eating dessert. “Why don’t we talk about this over a donut?”
It wasn’t like me to turn down a treat, but in this instance, I had a very good reason to.
“No,” I said. “And you should lay off the donuts too.”
Kaitlin did not respond well to my unsolicited diet advice. “Says the woman who took me out for chocolate.”
She had me there. It was hard to argue with that, although not impossible.
I had the best excuse at my disposal. “When you’re seventy-five, there’s never a bad reason to have chocolate. The rules are different for you.”
She scoffed. “Seriously, you expect me to just accept that?”
“There’s no denying that you have a keen investigative mind, but it’s also impossible to deny it’ll be harder to find a man if you pack on extra donut weight.”
She tried to interrupt me, but I didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. After all these years, she was finally listening to me, so I wanted to get all my feelings out in the open in case she decided to clam up.
“And, with no man in your life, it’ll mean no grandkids for me to spoil. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m eager to spoil.”
“Trust me, I’ve noticed.”
“Well, get to it, then. I’m not getting any younger.”
There was a part of me that worried I’d thrown too much at her. I braced myself in case she opted to fire back at me in exasperation. Once again, she surprised me and silently took all my comments in. This new side to my daughter was quickly growing on me.
When she was done digesting everything I’d said, she flashed a big smile my way before paying me the biggest compliment she ever could.
“You still look pretty young to me.”
Just as my daughter knew how to push my buttons, she also knew how to flatter me beyond belief. I was a softy when it came to getting buttered up, and she’d done a great job of making me feel like a superstar.
As far as I was concerned, she’d earned a sweet treat. Besides, it was frankly just refreshing to see her in such a good mood. It would be a pity not to take advantage of that.
One round of donuts wouldn’t do any irreparable harm. Honestly, with all the running around we’d done over the last few days, we easily had a few hundred calories to spare. At least, that was how I justified it, and I wasn’t going to change my story, so don’t even try to make me.
Dessert aside, the key point was that I had my daughter back. If this case had taught me anything, it was that things could change at any moment, so it was important to appreciate blessings as they came.
I decided to do just that. “Okay, donuts it is, then. My treat.”
The End.
Chocolate with a Side of Murder
Chapter One
“Any sign of her?” I asked.
I was gasping for breath as I reached my mother’s car. For the last hour, I had been running up and down a rural stretch of Route 32 at a frantic pace, looking for any sign of my nineteen-year-old sister. Jessica had gone out for a jog earlier that morning and had not been heard from since.
It just didn’t add up. My sister was a woman of routine. She woke up at the same time every day, went out for a run, took the same route, came back thirty-five minutes later, and then prepared a green smoothie for herself when she arrived home.
Jessica preferred to run alone, but that morning, I wished that she hadn’t. My sister’s reason for running solo was simple—she told me that her morning jogs gave her time to clear her head and think. Normally, that rationale got no argument from me. It was safe to say that running was not my thing.
By and large, I had been plenty happy to stay at home while Jessica went on her jogs. Of course, back then, I was eighteen years old, and I foolishly believed that my metabolism would keep effortlessly burning off all of the calories that I filled my stomach with.
Then again, during the school year, I spent so much time walking to and from class on campus that I burned plenty of calories without realizing it. As I got older, my growing waistline ended up giving me a wakeup call, to the point where I had to resign myself to putting in some time on the treadmill on a regular basis. During my teen years, however, it was crazy to think how clueless I was about things like nutrition and exercise.
My older sister had always been wiser than I was about those matters. She also had a determination that was admirable. For years, she kept to the same jogging routine without any deviation. It wasn’t enough to say that she was a creature of habit. Jessica was so set in her ways that I could set my watch by her.
That August morning was different. Thirty-five minutes after she had left for her run, she hadn’t returned home. At first, I waited a few extra minutes, wondering if maybe the stop light at the intersection of Route 32 and Oak Street had taken a little longer to change that morning. Some days, it had a nasty habit of staying red for an interminably long time.
After an additional twenty minutes had gone by without me seeing or hearing from Jessica, I picked up my phone and called her. My suspicion only grew when she didn’t pick up. That really wasn’t like her. Jessica was the kind of woman who answered her phone by the second ring.
A queasy feeling came to my stomach. Before I began to panic, I called her again. Unfortunately, I had no luck reaching her. There was no keeping the worry from my mind any longer. Deep in my gut, I knew something was wrong.
When I expressed my concern to my mother and stepfather, we decided to go out looking for Jessica. Together, we drove the length of my sister’s typical jogging route with our eyes peeled. Unfortunately, that yielded no results.
As our search continued, I decided to try something different. My mother and stepfather remained in the car and drove back and forth along Jessica’s usual route. I, meanwhile, got out of the car and searched for my sister on foot. There were some stretches of the route that I could get better visibility of by being outside of the car. Most importantly, now every angle was covered.
Yet, despite all of my looking, I wasn’t able to spot my sister. As much as I tried not to descend into a full-blown panic, it was becoming hard to deny that something suspicious had occurred. The problem was, as much as I had scoured her route, I had not discovered a single clue of what had happened to her.
So when I saw my mother’s car approach,
I prayed that she’d had better luck.
When I asked her for an update, much to my chagrin, my mom, Elizabeth Daley, shook her head. “I have looked everywhere and haven’t seen any sign of her.”
As those words spilled out of her mouth, there was a look on my mother’s face that I had never seen before. It was one of pure terror.
My heart sank.
Mom was usually so good at not showing cracks in her armor. It was in her nature to put on a good face and to offer a soothing voice of reassurance. So for her to be so visibly distraught was unheard of.
In addition, my stepfather, Luke Norton, a man who was known for having a steady hand, also looked jittery. So much so that he had no words of encouragement to offer.
Hope was in scarce supply, which only made me even more frantic. I had been trying to keep panic at bay but was now failing miserably. Horrible thoughts bounced around in my head. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to find a way to get rid of them. It was so frustrating. After all, I knew that negativity wouldn’t do me any good, but that didn’t mean that I could get my brain to listen to me.
Instead, my mind skipped right to the worst-case scenario. With that, my world was turned upside down. It took all the energy I had not to scream.
“How about you?” Elizabeth asked.
More than anything, I wanted to be able to share any kind of good news. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any to speak of. I shook my head. “I haven’t found a single trace of her. On top of that, she still isn’t answering her phone. I have called her ten times and haven’t gotten an answer.”
My parents and I looked around, completely distressed. The questions in our heads piled up. Where was Jessica? What had happened to her? Why wasn’t she picking up her phone?
It was as if she had just disappeared into thin air. Only, that didn’t make any sense. She had to be somewhere. Besides, people didn’t just go missing without a trace in a place like Treasure Cove. I knew the days of sleepy small towns where the residents didn’t even have to lock their front doors at night were long gone. That being said, something heinous like an abduction occurring in my coastal California tourist town was unthinkable to me.
Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 84