I gasped as I dropped the bag of trash that I was holding. My heart began to race like crazy. For a moment, I thought my eyes were betraying me. But when I took a few steps toward my friend’s body, suddenly there was no denying what I saw. It wasn’t just some delusion—Andrew was really there in that alleyway, completely motionless.
“Andrew!” I yelled.
I didn’t know why I thought that screaming would make him hear me. Clearly, he was dead. I was just panicked beyond belief. Things like this didn’t happen to me. I had never discovered a dead body before.
So many questions rushed through my brain. How could this have happened? How did he end up like this? Who could have done something so awful?
Even crazier was the fact that I had just seen Andrew alive last night. What had gone on between then and now that had led to this? Granted, Andrew had looked very distressed at the restaurant, but there was no way I would have predicted that this would happen.
I immediately knew what I had to do.
***
Normally I would have dialed 9-1-1, but with my boyfriend being a police detective, David was the first call that I placed. My boyfriend arrived on the scene twelve minutes later, followed shortly after by a forensics team, a number of deputies, and the county medical examiner. Soon, the whole area was abuzz with police activity. The forensics team went to work looking to pull fingerprints from the scene. The medical examiner took a look at the body. Police deputies cordoned off the alleyway.
David pulled me aside, not just to take my statement, but to try to comfort me. That was a tall task. I became very emotional when I explained how I had discovered the body. David wrapped his arms around me, but that was not enough to keep me from getting choked up.
“I’m so sorry you had to see that,” he said.
My face was filled with shock. “I’m sorry he’s dead.”
David exhaled. “That, too. It’s awful what happened to him.”
My body trembled. “Who would do something like this?”
While David was sympathetic to the emotions I was grappling with, he was also an investigator who had a very good answer to my question. “Judging by what he said to you last night, I can think of a few people.”
My eyes were as wide as saucers. “I didn’t mean who had a reason to kill him. Who is actually crazy enough to murder Andrew?”
As a detective, not only had David learned how to detach his emotions during a case, but he had spent much more time confronted with death. Given that, it should have come as no surprise to me that his reply was very general.
“We live in a crazy world. One that seems to keep getting more out of control by the moment.”
“I wish things would go back to how they used to be.”
“So do I. Unfortunately, from what I have seen, there’s a slim chance of that happening.”
I groaned as my emotions were on the verge of pouring out again. He pulled me in close once more. I didn’t want him to let me go, even though I knew he had to.
After all, as tough as it was for him to make the transition, Andrew’s death wasn’t just a terrible loss. It was the beginning of a homicide investigation, which David had to take charge of.
David took a deep breath then prepared himself to dive into the details of the case. “Sabrina, I know this is a very emotional time for you, but I’m afraid that I have to ask you some questions.”
I took a deep breath. “Right. Of course.”
“When you discovered the body, did you see anyone else around?”
“No. I was the only one in the alley.”
“Did you hear anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. I just came outside to throw the trash in the dumpster, spotted the body, and called you.”
His face tensed up.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t be of more help,” I said.
“You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just frustrated by the case.”
“You’re not the only one. This is the most awful thing to have happened since…”
I couldn’t finish my sentence. It was already an emotional enough time for me without mentioning my sister’s disappearance.
Besides, I didn’t even need to say Jessica’s name. David already knew where I was going with my statement without me even finishing it.
“I can’t imagine how hard this is for you,” he said.
Not wanting to break into tears, I took a few deep breaths to try to calm myself down.
Seeing how hard it was for me to keep myself together, David rushed to finish things up with me. “Anyway, I don’t have any other questions for you, so you’re free to head on out.”
I held my hand up. “Actually, before I go, there is one more thing I wanted to tell you.”
He scrunched his nose. “What is it?”
I moved over toward the dumpster, where a hot-pink-colored earring was on the ground. “While I was waiting for you to show up, I couldn’t help but spot this next to the body.”
David stared long and hard at the earring. “That’s a good catch.”
“I can’t help but wonder if it belongs to the killer.”
“That’s a possibility. It’s not every day you find an earring in a back alley beside a body. Especially when it’s just one earring.”
“Exactly,” I said. “After all, earrings come in pairs. It kind of makes you wonder where the second earring is.”
“I would love to be able to ask the owner of the earring that question,” David replied.
My eyes opened wide. “I might be able to help you with that.”
“Really? Do you recognize this earring?” he asked.
“No.”
Before he became discouraged, I gave him something to work with.
“That said, there’s only one person I know in town who would wear an earring that gaudy,” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
“Andrew’s wife.”
Chapter Eleven
While David and his forensics team went over every inch of the alleyway for clues, I was free to return to my normal life. Although the last thing I would call my life those days was normal. If anything, with each breath I took, my life was becoming weirder and weirder.
I headed back inside the café, but my job was the last thing on my mind. Making lattes took a backseat to trying to get the piercing image of Andrew’s dead body out of my mind. It was a mental scar that would take a lot more than time to heal.
My emotions were a messy potluck of pain, shock, and intense sadness. From one moment to the next, I went from mourning Andrew’s death to questioning how something this awful ever could have happened. While I was wrestling with a handful of questions, I had a distinct shortage of answers.
That didn’t stop me from trying to piece together what had happened. Part of that was my natural curiosity. From experience, I knew that without the facts, closure was hard to come by. My sister’s disappearance had taught me that sobering lesson.
There was something else at play. Whether David realized it or not, during our time dating, I had become familiar with some investigative truths. In addition, I also watched a lot of detective shows on TV. Privately, of course. David and I used to watch police procedurals together, but he spoiled the experience by spending entire episodes critiquing the inaccuracy of the detective work on the show. It also didn’t sit well with David that I was able to figure out who the killer was in each episode more often than he did.
Don’t tell my mother this, but it turned out that watching TV actually had its benefits. For example, I had learned that when it came to murder, a spouse—especially a jaded one—always darted to the top of the suspect list. A staggering number of murders were committed by a significant other.
That didn’t mean that was the truth this time, but Andrew certainly had a bitter spouse. In addition to Andrew mentioning that Leah wanted to sell the chocolate shop, the Stewarts also happened to be on their way to divorce court.
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br /> Even so, had Leah Stewart been angry enough with her husband to kill him? Before I could fully mull over the question, my mother pulled me out of my mental fog.
“Honey, why don’t you go home?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. I want to stay,” I replied.
“Why? We have plenty enough people here to cover your work shift. Besides, you just discovered Andrew’s dead body. The last thing you should be doing with your time right now is making cappuccinos.”
“Mom, thanks for your concern. Really. But I just feel like I need to be here—”
My mother waved her hand at me dismissively. “That’s nonsense. You’re going home. Your father will drive you.”
“I think your mother is right,” my stepfather said. “I don’t see what good it will do for you to hang around here.”
My emotions began to swell. “I’m not sure that I want to be alone right now. Besides, if I’m back home, I’ll just end up obsessing about what happened. At least here I can distract myself.”
“I disagree—” my mother began saying.
“And I respect that, but I’m telling you, being left alone with my thoughts right now would be a disaster.”
Elizabeth gazed deep into my eyes. All it took was a few seconds for her to realize that my opinion wasn’t going to waver. With all the trauma I had experienced that morning, she decided not to add to it by starting an argument with me.
“Suit yourself,” she said. In true mom fashion, she was determined to get the last word in on the topic. “But let me know if you change your mind.”
“I will.”
It didn’t take long for me to get lost in thought again.
My mother couldn’t resist the urge to dive into my brain. “What are you thinking about?”
I pulled my head out of the clouds. “I just can’t make sense of how things came to this. I mean, Leah Stewart—a killer?”
A pained look came over my mom’s face. “I know it’s crazy to think about, but you said it yourself, you found an ugly pink earring next to Andrew’s body, and Leah is practically the queen of ugly earrings.”
My stepfather spoke up. “Dear, you seem to have added your own editorial opinion to what Sabrina told you.”
My mother scoffed. “Are you going to try and tell me that Leah doesn’t own the ugliest earrings on the planet?”
I shook my head. “I’m still just shocked that Andrew was killed. I mean, I know that sometimes marriages go south, but to resort to murder? Who does that?”
“I’ll tell you who—crazy people,” my mom said.
“Clearly you have to be crazy to kill someone,” I replied. “What I meant was, how could things have gotten so out of hand between Leah and Andrew?”
My mother got a faraway look in her eyes. “Divorce can drive people mad. You may have been too young to remember, but when your father and I were in the middle of our divorce, I experienced a level of anger that I had never felt before in my life.”
I stared deep into my mom’s eyes. “As angry as you were at him, did you ever consider killing him?”
My mother shook her head. “No.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Then again, I’m not crazy,” my mom replied.
My stepfather spoke up again. “It may be of little comfort, but if Leah did do this, she’ll end up paying dearly for it. And if she is the guilty party, we can breathe a sigh of relief that this case was quick to solve.”
My mother’s eyes widened. “Yeah. Could you imagine if a killer was on the loose in Treasure Cove for an extended period of time? It would be tough to sleep at night.”
I took a deep breath before responding. “I already have a hard enough time sleeping.”
My mother looked over toward the crowd of people that had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the chocolate shop. “It’s still amazing to me that such a horrible thing happened just outside our back door.”
My stepfather was floored. “Who could have predicted this?”
I shook my head. “Certainly not me.”
My mother’s eyebrows arched. “It makes you realize how little you know about what’s going on right under your nose.”
My stepfather looked out into the distance. “It also makes you wonder what else has been going on that we don’t know about.”
Chapter Twelve
Time kept ticking by on the clock, but the topic of conversation in the coffee shop remained the same. Not just with my parents, but with every customer who entered. Andrew’s murder was all anyone wanted to talk about. I didn’t blame the townsfolk for getting wrapped up in speculation. The same was true of me. I couldn’t speak for big cities, but in a small town like Treasure Cove, murder was a big deal.
I could only think of two other cases where something this shocking had ever taken place in town. The first was the Watterson double murder-suicide, which had occurred decades ago. The second was my sister’s disappearance, which was over ten years ago. The good news was that horrifying things like this didn’t happen very often around here. The problem was, when they did occur, it made them even more shocking.
I didn’t come across a single person that afternoon who didn’t have an opinion about Andrew’s murder. The coffee shop was abuzz with equal parts panic and gossip. Everyone was so hopped up on adrenaline that espresso just seemed unnecessary. Or dare I say—overkill?
The only exception was my boyfriend, who looked completely exhausted as he entered the shop in the late morning just before the lunch rush began. He was ragged beyond belief. One thought entered my mind as I looked into his weary eyes—that coffee was invented for moments like this.
My heart went out to him. This was far from his standard caseload. A typical day for him consisted of calls about burglaries, public drunkenness, and maybe the occasional domestic disturbance. Murder was a whole new ballgame.
“Rough day?” I asked.
David groaned. “That’s an understatement.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
If I thought it would have helped him, I would have reached across the counter and given him a big hug. He didn’t look like he was in the mood for an embrace. Instead, I offered an alternative.
“It looks like you could use a double espresso,” I replied.
“Actually, make that a triple.”
“Uh-oh.”
In all the time I had known him, David had never ordered a triple before. This case was clearly giving him more trouble than I previously thought.
David groaned. “It has just been one of those days.”
That was something we could both agree on. It had been the kind of morning that I desperately wanted to forget.
“A dead body will do that.” Added concern came to my face. “Still, did things go triple espresso bad with Leah?”
His face tensed up. “I can’t imagine them going worse.”
I reached out to him to take his hand. “Honey, that’s terrible. I just want you to know that I’m here for you.”
“Thanks.” He looked down at the ground. “I’ll explain everything once I get caffeine in my system.”
His words only gave me a snippet of his true emotions. When I gazed into his eyes, I could see how troubled he really was.
“It really is one of those days. Triple espresso, coming up,” I said.
I fired up the espresso machine and made his triple. I was barely able to pour the espresso into a cup when he grabbed it and gulped it quickly like he was taking a shot of whiskey.
I grew more worried by the minute. “Now do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “No. Actually, I just want to pretend that today never happened. Unfortunately, that’s useless.”
“What’s the matter? Did Leah not talk to you?”
His eyebrows arched. “She talked, all right.”
I scratched my forehead. “Then what’s the problem?”
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“She has a rock-solid alibi for the time of the murder.”
I hesitated before replying. No wonder he was so out of sorts. Leah was the most logical suspect. David and I had both figured this case was open and shut. This news turned all those assumptions upside down.
“Does that mean you think she didn’t do it?” I asked.
He looked mystified. “Between her alibi and the fact that the forensics team didn’t find her fingerprints at the scene of the crime, surprisingly, Leah looks to be in the clear.”
“But how did that earring get at the scene, then?”
He shrugged. “Leah told me it wasn’t hers.”
I knitted my brow. “Really? It sure looked like her kind of earring.”
“She claims to have never seen that earring before.”
“Do you believe her?”
A baffled look remained on his face. “At first, I didn’t. But my deputies searched every inch of her place and didn’t find the second earring.”
“She could have disposed of the second earring, realizing that it would incriminate her,” I said.
“True,” he replied. “Although that doesn’t change the fact that she has a rock-solid alibi.”
This was incredible. At each turn, my suspicions were thwarted.
On the surface, it didn’t make sense to cross Leah off of the suspect list. At the same time, given all the information that David had shared with me, it was becoming hard to keep her on it.
I put my hands on my hips. “Do you believe her story?”
David grimaced. “I never thought I’d say this, but yes. It’s hard to argue with a verifiable alibi, especially when I have no additional evidence pinning her to the crime.”
It was staggering how quickly this case had gone from being a sure thing to completely up in the air. What a terrible feeling, seeing the case slip away while being powerless to stop it.
That said, I still had a few lingering questions pertaining to Leah.
Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 89