“No,” Mom said. “I thought it was weird they were together. Once Mamie came after me, they both came to the lake together. When I left, they were all there with Sebastian.”
I thought on what Mom had said. “Mom, the way he was stabbed, there would be a lot of blood, right? I mean, there was blood all over the place. When Mamie came in, her dress was muddy, but she didn’t have any blood on her.”
“So, if Mamie didn’t do it, who did?” Mom asked.
I pulled my laptop open on a hunch. I wanted to review the photos I’d taken yesterday, hoping there was something in there I’d overlooked. “I don’t know. Mamie is sticking to her story that you killed him, but I talked to Bobby, and he said he told the police he saw you leave, and Mr. Oglethorpe was still alive.”
Mom sighed. “Oh, thank goodness. I owe that young man.”
“Did your phone calls net any information?” I asked.
Mom frowned. “You could say that. I talked to Sylvia at the insurance company. She didn’t tell me details, but she hinted that Mamie would be a very rich woman if anything happened to Sebastian.”
“Mom, that gives Mamie even more motive. And even more reason to blame you.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mom said.
My curiosity piqued, I scrolled through the photos and zoomed in on each one hunting for clues and paying particular attention to that side fire exit. Three photos in particular caught my attention, and they all contained the same person. And it wasn’t Mamie Oglethorpe.
“I think I know what happened.” I called Detective Chandler, but my call went to his voice mail. I left a message telling him I was on my way to the country club with the pen I’d found on my car and photos of the killer. Then I closed my laptop, put it in my bag, and headed for the door. “I’m going to take these photos to Detective Chandler. They show all the evidence he needs to arrest the killer.”
“Shelby, what evidence? What’s going on?” Mom shouted as I slammed the door behind me.
Chapter Eleven
I headed back to Copper Springs Country Club. If my hunch was right, the proof of who had killed Mr. Oglethorpe was still at the club, hidden beneath the shrubbery near the fire exit. The photo of the killer ditching the evidence was on my laptop. All I had to do was show Detective Chandler, and his case would be airtight.
Bobby was nowhere around when I pulled into the drive. All the police vehicles were gone, too. The only visible signs of police activity were the remnants of crime scene tape dangling from the trees at the lake.
I shrugged off a shiver and drove up to the portico, stopped my car, and got out, draping the bag with my laptop over my shoulder. The breeze had picked up and bits of leaf debris skittered across the drive. The whole place looked deserted. I checked the mirrors Bobby told me about and saw for myself how easily it had been to spot Mr. Austin and Mrs. Jamison by the tent.
When I got to the fire exit, my cursory search turned up nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. I was on my hands and knees crawling around under the shrubs when the side door opened.
Chase Austin stepped out onto a concrete paver. “You looking for this?” he asked, swinging his tux jacket over his shoulder. The same jacket he had on the afternoon Mr. Oglethorpe was murdered. Also, the same jacket he’d worn in a shot I had of him going out the door. The same jacket he didn’t have on in a photo with him in the background coming in the same door. And as luck would have it, the door was half glass, and I had a shot of him removing the same jacket before he came in the door. All time and date stamped.
“Uh, no.” I gulped. “I misplaced a lens yesterday when I was taking outdoor shots after the rehearsal.”
“Under the bushes?” Austin laughed. “I don’t think so. Get inside.”
I thought about running, but my car was too far away, and out of habit, I’d locked it. And Chase Austin appeared to be in good shape for an older guy.
“I’ll take your cell,” he said.
I reached into the pocket of my jeans and extracted the phone. He grabbed it, dropped it on the ground, and smashed it with the heel of his shoe.
He shoved me through the doorway. The room was still decorated for Olivia and Tyler’s rehearsal dinner. The candy cane décor I thought humorous and tacky yesterday, looked twisted and gruesome today, especially with the killer standing behind me. Half empty drink glasses still littered the tables, and the candles had burned down to nubs, leaving little black stumps of wicks exposed. The head table had tall ceramic candy canes flanking the ends. Creepy indeed.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, feeling a surge of bravery. “I mean, he was going to sign the agreement with Brasher Construction, right?”
“The agreement had nothing to do with it,” Austin said. “That was in the bag.”
“Then it was Mamie?” I asked. “You’re having an affair with Mamie. I heard you and Mr. Oglethorpe arguing yesterday. At first, I thought you and Mrs. Jamison were a thing. Bobby saw you two standing by the fire exit, and she was bawling her eyes out. Maybe you broke it up with her to be with Mamie. Did Mamie tell you her husband had a life insurance policy? Is that why you killed him? You get the company, the insurance, and his wife.”
Mr. Austin grunted and pushed me forward.
“And Mamie must be in on it. That’s why she made her grand entrance blaming my mother.” I pointed to the jacket, stained with dried remnants of Mr. Oglethorpe’s blood. “Only you didn’t plan for the blood to squirt out like you’d hit a geyser.”
“You stupid twit.” Austin pushed the coat into a grocery sack he’d retrieved from his pocket. “I thought the ink pen on your car door would scare you off. You always were too nosy for your own good. How’d you know to look in the bushes for my jacket? Or was that just dumb luck?”
I pulled my laptop from my bag and remembered the keyring in my pocket. The keyring with the canister of pepper spray my mother insisted I carry. Even though I’d laughed when she gave it to me—this was Copper Springs after all—I was thankful to have it. Now, I just had to figure out the best time to use it. “I’ve got photos of you going out that door in your jacket and coming back in without it,” I said, waving my laptop. “Not to mention the one I snapped of you outside ditching it in the bushes.”
Austin lunged for me, but I pulled back. “Not so fast. These aren’t the only copies. The memory card is in my camera at home. If you do anything to me, my mother will take it straight to the police.” I hoped. Now I wished I’d told her what I’d found.
“Looks like we’re going to have to pay your mom a visit.” Mr. Austin nodded toward the back hallway of the club and nudged me forward. “We’ll take my car.”
Drat! There was no way I was getting in a car with a killer. It was now or never. Austin had the grocery sack in one hand and his keys in the other.
I slid my hand into my pocket and unlocked the pepper spray. He opened the door, and I tucked the canister in my hand and removed it from my pocket. When he turned back toward me, I emptied the canister in his face. He dropped the sack with the bloody jacket and fell to his knees screaming. For good measure, I hit him upside the head with my laptop, grabbed the sack, then sprinted back through the club to the front door.
When I ran out to the portico, Detective Chandler was just parking his car behind mine.
I jogged across the drive. “He’s inside! He killed Mr. Oglethorpe!”
The detective climbed out of his car with a puzzled look on his face. “What’s going on?”
I shoved the sack at him. “It’s Mr. Austin. He’s the killer.”
“Get in my car and stay there,” Detective Chandler ordered.
While I fumbled with the door handle, he called in a request for backup.
“Where is he?”
I showed the detective my canister of pepper spray, and he stepped back. “It’s empty. I sprayed the whole thing on him. Last time I saw him he was on his knees at the back exit.”
“Jeez. Lock the doors and stay here. There’s a car on the way to
assist.” Detective Chandler pulled a gun from beneath his coat and went inside.
By the time I’d quit shivering, the second car had arrived. I told them what I’d told the detective, but before the officers could get to the door, Chandler came out with Mr. Austin in handcuffs.
Chapter Twelve
Not only had Mr. Austin destroyed my cell phone, but I was pretty sure I’d wrecked my laptop when I whacked him with it. Detective Chandler followed me home to collect the ink pen and the memory card from my camera.
After he left, Mom poured us a couple glasses of wine from her stash. “Sit down,” she said. “We need to talk.”
I’d already told her about my confrontation with Mr. Austin. I’d figured out he was having an affair with Mamie, what I didn’t reckon on was his greediness. He and Mr. Oglethorpe had a partnership agreement. With Mr. Oglethorpe dead, instead of Mamie inheriting his portion of the business, it went to his partner, Mr. Austin.
“Mamie thought I would be the perfect suspect, since I have a history with Sebastian.” Mom rotated the wine glass staring into the liquid. “And she assumed the police would buy into it.”
“What she failed to consider was Bobby seeing you leave while Mr. Oglethorpe was still alive,” I said. “Detective Chandler said Mamie would be arrested, too.”
Mom buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “I’m going to miss him so much. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
My thoughts were exactly the same as hers, but whether Tyler and Olivia were able to patch things up or not after her deception, it didn’t matter. There would never be anything between Tyler and me. I couldn’t turn my feelings into friendship with him like Mom had with Mr. Oglethorpe. I put my arm around Mom and hugged her. “We’ve got each other. It won’t be easy, but we have to move on.”
“You’re talking about Tyler?” Mom asked.
I nodded.
“Maybe a change of scenery might help.” Mom pulled the packet of papers from her purse—the ones I’d seen on the table yesterday. “You know we have to move in a couple of days.”
I’d seen the stack of empty boxes. “I know. Where are we going to go? Who’ll rent to us? Neither one of us has a job. We can forget about the money we were going to make from the wedding. That’s gone.”
“I might have something in mind.” Mom handed me the packet.
I pulled out a stack of papers. On top was a letter from a Miami law firm. “Do I even want to know?”
Mom laughed. “It’s not bad. I promise.”
I read the letter which said Mom had inherited a residence and coffee shop on Key Bella Luna from Bridget Calvin. “Who is Bridget Calvin? Is this a joke?”
“No. At least I don’t think so,” Mom said. “Bridget is Birdie Calvin, my mom’s aunt. She never married and had no children. Looks like I’m her only relative.”
“What is Key Bella Luna?” I asked.
Mom got a wistful look in her eyes. “Every summer my mother would pack us up and off we’d go to visit Aunt Birdie. The best three months of every year were spent on Key Bella Luna—a tiny key off the coast of Florida.”
I remembered my mother talking about summers in Florida with her Aunt Birdie, never realizing her aunt lived on an island.
“Why didn’t you ever take me?” I asked, feeling a bit slighted. We seldom left Copper Springs, much less went to Florida.
Mom slid the papers back into the envelope. “Around my fifteenth birthday, Mom and Aunt Birdie had a falling out, and we never went back. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
I imagined a cozy café, much like my friend Gerri Lynne’s, and a beautiful seaside cottage where we could have a garden. “So, what’s it like? The house and the coffee shop?”
Mom disappeared into her bedroom and came back with a photo album. She flipped open the pages and set the book in front of me. “Look for yourself.”
My mouth fell open. The cottage I had imagined was actually a Victorian with turrets and gingerbread sitting on a beautiful beach leading to the ocean. The coffee shop looked ordinary, but it had outside tables with striped umbrellas lining a boardwalk. “Sign me up,” I said. “This is the best Christmas ever.”
“Who knows? Maybe next year will be even better.”
I nodded.
“You won’t mind leaving Copper Springs?” Mom asked, starting to tear up.
I thought about it for a nanosecond. “No.”
“What about Tyler?” Mom shut the album and pushed it aside. “You’ve never known life without him.”
“He made his choice, and even if he and Olivia don’t patch things up, I can’t live my life wondering if he’ll have a change of heart and dump me again. We’ve played that game too many times. No, I think it’s time for the Rutherford girls to have a fresh start.”
THE END
Links to Tricia L. Sanders’ Books
Murder is a Dirty Business
(Grime Pays Mystery Book 1)
viewbook.at/MurderisaDirtyBusiness
Death, Diamonds, and Freezer Burn
(Grime Pays Mystery Book 2)
viewbook.at/DDAFB
Sleigh Bells and Sleuthing
(A Sleuthing Women Anthology)
viewbook.at/SleighBells
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Murder in Rhyme by Kathryn Dionne
MURDER IN RHYME
by Kathryn Dionne
Murder in Rhyme Copyright © 2018
Kathryn Dionne. All rights reserved.
This eBook is intended for personal use only and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or redistributed in any way without the express written consent of the author.
Murder in Rhyme, is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, organizations, real people - living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. All other events and characters portrayed are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by Shondra C. Longino.
Chapter One
“Look at those beautiful bones!”
Tess Langley stood on the sidewalk staring up at the old Victorian house, chips of pale-yellow paint peeling off of its clapboard façade, teeth missing on the white picket railing that lined the porch, and a fringe of dried, overgrown grass covering up the stone base. She nudged her friend in the ribs trying to elicit a response. “And check out the white lace filigree . . .” She pointed to the attic where the roof came to a steep apex. “You just don’t see that kind of craftsmanship anymore. Isn’t it simply magnificent?”
“Magnificent is not the word I’d use,” her friend muttered, staring at the backend of the moving van as it pulled out of the circular driveway, made a right turn and drove down the road. She looked back at the house and groaned. “If you ask me, menacing is a more appropriate word for this place, like in an Amityville Horror kind of way.” She pulled the collar of her winter coat up closer to her ears, blew into her hands and then shoved them into her pockets.
“Oh come on, Char,” Tess said, looking at her friend. “Don’t be that way. This place looks nothing like the one in the movie. This one’s beautiful. Or at least it will be.” She looked back up at the old house and smiled. “I know you’re having a hard time seeing my vision, but trust me; with a new coat of paint and a little bit of landscaping, come this spring, this place will be stunning.” She let out a happy sigh. “It’s a real gem, I tell you. You’ll see what a treasure this is, and so will the National Historical Society.”
“Tess, you and I both know that in order to get a historic designation for this house, you’re going to have to do a heck of a lot more than just slap on some paint and plant a few flowers. There’s electrical work that needs to be done, plumbing, structural, not to mention the interior décor.” Char pulled her hands out of her pockets and blew in them again. “It’s going to take a lot of work, and it’ll be expensive!”
“I’ve
already applied for a home equity loan,” said Tess. “Once it goes through, I’ll have plenty of money.”
“Even so,” said Char, “there’s no guarantee that once you sink all that cash into it that it will make the registry. You, of all people, should know that.” She shook her head. “Of all the places you looked at, and some very nice ones, I might add, I just don’t understand why you wanted to buy this old place. And two weeks before Christmas, no less.” Her breath came out in a cloudy vapor. “What were you thinking? This place hasn’t even been lived in for years. God only knows what kinds of vermin and rodents might still be in there.”
“Whatever problems the house has, I’ll deal with them,” said Tess.
Char shook her head. “The place is a dump.”
“It’s not a dump!” said Tess, still smiling up at the big house. “It just needs a little TLC.”
“And paint and plaster and wiring and new flooring and . . .”
“I know. I know,” said Tess holding up her hands. “But somebody needed to be an advocate for this old house, and it might as well have been me.”
“Not every old house is meant to be restored,” said Char with a shake of her head. “Sometimes it’s better to let places like these just die in peace.”
“Some places, maybe,” said Tess, pulling a set of keys out from her pocket, “but not this one. This house is special.” She walked up the sidewalk to the front door and stuck the key in the lock, jiggling it until she heard the deadbolt recede. “Besides, I don’t have to fix it all at once. I can do a little at a time.”
“You’re fifty years old,” said Char. “You don’t have that much time left!”
“Oh pshaw,” said Tess with a wave of her hand. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
They walked in through the front door and stood in the living room, both staring at the stacks of boxes scattered everywhere, and Char groaned. “Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got all the time in the world, because it’s going to take whatever time you have left on this earth to put all of those boxes away.” She glanced around. “Where’s Goober?”
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