Merry Christmas Cozy Mystery Gift Set

by Meredith Potts

  Joe let out a sigh as he got out of the car and walked toward the front door with me. He didn’t need to say anything. I already knew what he was thinking—there were so many other things he would have preferred to do with his ten o’clock hour than questioning another suspect. Not only did I agree with him, but I was sure that Elaine Dolan would be distinctly lacking in enthusiasm when she opened the door for us.

  When it came to that point, I didn’t really blame her. Ten forty-five at night was not the ideal time to have a pair of strangers knock on the door, especially if one of them was a homicide detective. At the same time, Joe and I didn’t want to wait until morning to get answers from Elaine.

  We could put up with a surly mood. What mattered was getting a leg up on this investigation, and catching Elaine off guard could do that. Not to mention, if we waited until morning to talk to her, it would give her twelve more hours to come up with a cover story.

  Instead, we would be talking to her mere hours after the murder had occurred. In previous cases, that had really come in handy.

  What little enthusiasm I had mustered quickly waned when Elaine didn’t answer my brother’s knocks. The silence didn’t deter Joe. If my brother was anything, he was persistent. He knocked again to no avail.

  After two unsuccessful set of knocks, I briefly wondered if maybe Elaine was out on the town. I dismissed that theory when I peered into her garage and saw her car parked inside.

  She was definitely home. She just didn’t want to answer the door. Next, I wondered if she had gone to sleep. Regardless of the explanation behind her silence, Elaine clearly had no intention of opening up for us.

  As my brother’s patience wore thin, Elaine would quickly realize how futile it would prove to try and avoid us. Joe was determined to do whatever was necessary to roust her. There were questions that we needed answers to, and we would get them whether Elaine liked it or not.

  Joe took a new approach, pounding especially hard on Elaine’s door. He then yelled at the door in order to draw as much attention to himself as possible.

  “Mrs. Dolan, this is the police. We need to talk to you. We’re not going anywhere until we do,” he said.

  Whether she was asleep or just avoiding us, there was no way Elaine didn’t hear that. Joe had yelled so loud that the neighbor’s three doors down had heard it. That was exactly what my brother wanted. Public embarrassment was a strong motivator.

  If he kept yelling and pounding on her door long enough that all the neighbors started peering over at us, it could force Elaine’s hand. After all, did she really want her neighbors to see her avoiding the police? That looked bad, not only for her image but for any pretense that she was innocent of murder.

  As expected, the public shaming did the trick. Shortly after Joe yelled, a light flicked on inside Elaine’s house. A few seconds later, she opened the door for us.

  While my brother had been successful in getting a reply from her, he had also made her quite angry.

  Elaine swung the front door open with a scowl on her face and gave us an earful. “What is the meaning of this?”

  It was an odd sight to see a petite woman with such bluster, but Elaine had a head full of steam. George’s estranged wife was in her late forties with long, straight black hair, an oval face, and glasses. She wore a red nightgown that went down to her ankles.

  I kept staring at her, trying to figure out if she had just been sleeping. When I woke up in the mornings, my hair was usually pretty tousled. Elaine’s hair looked as though it had been perfectly combed. Granted, she could have just run a brush through her hair before opening the door, but she also could have been awake this entire time and avoiding us. It was too hard for me to tell.

  My brother was more focused on Elaine’s demeanor than the state of her hair.

  “Do you really want to take that tone with the police?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t want to, but I also don’t like being woken up so rudely,” Elaine replied.

  I jumped in. “So wait. You’re telling us you were asleep, then?”

  She barked at me. “That’s what I just said.”

  That made me instantly suspicious of her. “You don’t look like you were just sleeping.”

  Elaine shot me a glare. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No. I’m just saying that your hair isn’t the least bit ruffled,” I replied.

  “I ran a brush through it. I’m not going to answer the door looking ragged,” Elaine said.

  My brother was in no mood to belabor the point and moved on to another topic. “So you were just asleep. I apologize for waking you up, but there is something very important that we need to discuss with you.”

  Elaine’s fuse remained short. “What is it?”

  “The murder of your husband,” Joe said.

  She was quick to correct him. “Ex-husband.”

  Really? That was her response? Not “Oh, that’s terrible,” or “I can’t believe it.” There wasn’t the least bit of surprise or remorse on her face. Instead, she was just outraged that Joe had referred to George as her husband and not her ex-husband. Talk about having twisted priorities.

  On the flip side, my brother had a knack for getting under a suspect’s skin. He always seemed to know the right buttons to push. That unusual skill did him no favors in his personal life, especially when it came to romantic relationships. During a murder investigation, however, it proved invaluable.

  Knowing that her marriage was a sore spot for Elaine, Joe went right back to talking about it.

  “Actually, since you two hadn’t finished duking it out in divorce court, you’re technically still married, Mrs. Dolan,” Joe said.

  If we were lucky, Elaine would become so annoyed that she would say something stupid. Unfortunately, she didn’t take the bait.

  Elaine shrugged. “Who says we were duking it out? I was going to get my half of everything, then we would have gone our separate ways.”

  Joe called her out. “Are you honestly going to pretend that you weren’t in the middle of a bitter divorce?”

  Elaine bit the corner of her lip. “What divorce is a walk in the park? Has it been the easiest separation ever? No. But all told, it has been pretty smooth.”

  I couldn’t believe how eager she was to downplay her divorce proceedings. We weren’t fools. My brother and I knew there was no such thing as a smooth divorce. It was an oxymoron, like a stress-free tax audit or a quick trip to the DMV. Whether she was willing to admit it or not, Elaine was spouting complete nonsense.

  What stood out to me even more than the lies she was telling us about her divorce was that she had expressed no remorse when we told her that her husband had been murdered. That seemed crazy to me. Even given the fact that she was in the middle of divorcing the man, to not even feign sympathy for his death was absurd.

  I wanted to bring that absurdity to the forefront of the conversation. “Elaine, I can’t help but notice how odd it was that you were more focused on correcting Joe for not referring to George as your ex-husband than you were remorseful about hearing that he had been murdered.”

  The look on Elaine’s face completely changed from one of outrage to a wide-eyed expression. “I guess that’s just because I’m in shock. We all deal with crazy news like that in our own ways.”

  In my mind, it was a little too late for her to pretend she was in shock. As I peered into her eyes, she didn’t look the least bit surprised that her estranged husband was dead. Then again, none of her reactions made sense to me. Granted, I had never been in the middle of a divorce. Still, Elaine’s cold and calculated reaction shook me to the core.

  I wanted to keep the heat on her. “You have a funny way of showing us you’re in shock.”

  Elaine took an argumentative tone with me. “I don’t know how you expect me to react. You wake me up and tell me my ex-husband has been killed, then you criticize how I react to the news. You don’t know me. Who are you to tell me how I should react?”

  “I ju
st thought you’d have a little empathy, especially since you’ve been trying to convince us that your divorce was going smoothly,” I replied.

  “It was going smoothly, but I was still divorcing the man.”

  “Exactly. You two weren’t getting along well, right?”

  Elaine could see the path I was leading her down. She stopped dead in her tracks.

  She shook her head. “Oh, no you don’t.”

  I took my foot off the metaphorical gas pedal. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t try to blame me for what happened to George.”

  Joe took the lead. “We’re not blaming you. We just want some answers.”

  “What kind of answers?” Elaine replied.

  My brother and I had thrown her off balance. It was the perfect time to turn up the heat.

  “To start, where were you between seven and eight o’clock tonight?” Joe asked.

  Elaine’s eyes widened. “I told you not to try to blame me for what happened.”

  “And I told you, we just want the truth. If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” Joe said.

  “Like I said, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Fine, then prove it.”

  Elaine huffed at my brother. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to come to my house and accuse me of murder.”

  Joe kept the pressure on. “You still haven’t answered the question. Why not? What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing. I’ve been here all night,” Elaine replied.

  “Do you have anyone who can verify that?” Joe asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been here by myself.”

  “That’s a no then,” Joe said.

  Elaine folded her arms. “You can try to point the finger of blame at me all you want, but you’re talking to the wrong person.”

  Ah, the old standby. When all else failed, suspects often turned to pointing the finger of blame elsewhere. I had been wondering if Elaine would resort to those measures. As expected, she tried to take the spotlight off herself. It didn’t exactly come as a surprise to me. After all, what kind of a murder investigation would it be if a few suspects didn’t try to throw each other under the bus?

  “What makes you so sure we’re talking to the wrong person?” I asked.

  “Just hear me out,” she urged.

  I decided to let her keep talking. Maybe she’d talk herself in circles. My brother and I had received a number of useful leads during previous investigations from letting suspects play the blame game with each other. Perhaps that would happen this time as well. There was also the chance that Elaine would unknowingly talk her way into a corner. The opportunities were endless.

  “All right,” I replied. “Who should we be talking to?”

  Elaine didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Mike Griswold.”

  “Why him?” I asked.

  “Mike and George have been big rivals at work for years. Then, about six months ago, George got the promotion that Mike had been eyeing. Mike did not take the news well,” Elaine said.

  While I thought about Elaine’s theory, the fact was not lost on me that she had been quick to condemn us for pointing the finger of blame at her, yet she wasted no time in casting suspicion on someone else.

  “So you want us to believe that Mike Griswold might have killed your estranged husband over a promotion?” I asked.

  Elaine shook her head. “Not just any promotion. Mike and George took their work dead seriously. It was more than a job to them. They were obsessed with getting the respect they thought they deserved.”

  “Thank you for the tip. We will certainly pay Mike Griswold a visit,” I said.

  “Good. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  What a slippery woman. Did she really think I was going to let her slide out of the conversation just like that? Nice try.

  I stopped her. “Not so fast.”

  Elaine gave me a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re not done here.”

  “Weren’t you listening to me? You should be questioning Mike right now instead of wasting your time with me.”

  My brother forced himself back into the conversation. “Don’t tell us what we should and shouldn’t be doing.” He stared Elaine down. “Now, back to you, Elaine.”

  “I already told you, I had nothing to do with my husband’s death,” Elaine insisted.

  Joe held firm. “You keep saying that, but you have no proof.”

  Elaine fired back. “Neither do you. If you had evidence that I did something wrong, you’d be arresting me right now. Yet you’re just questioning me, which means all you have is speculation. Since you don’t have any evidence, I have nothing else to say to you.”

  As much as we hated to admit it, she was right. At the same time, Joe wasn’t about to let her go without a warning.

  “Before you go, know this—we have our eyes on you.”

  Chapter Ten

  After Elaine had made such a fuss about George’s work rival, my brother and I decided to pay George’s former place of employment a visit. That should be interesting, not just because we could get some further information about Mike Griswold, but also because George had worked for Renegade Reggie’s RV Rodeo. I was a fan of neither recreational vehicles nor of high-pressure sales, but both would be in heavy supply at the RV Rodeo. That was, after we were able to squeak past the long line of cars waiting to turn in to the mall parking lot.

  It was not the best time to be driving. Judging by the congestion on the roads, I found it hard to believe that it was eleven thirty at night. I expected that kind of traffic at five o’clock, but it was nearly unheard of for so many cars to be on the road so close to midnight. That was the power of the holiday shopping season—it turned every hour into rush hour.

  I was quickly reminded of why I steered clear of the mall at this time of year. Fighting off soul-crushing crowds was one holiday tradition I was glad not to be a part of. At that moment, I was thrilled that I had my shopping already done, and even more so that I had made most of my purchases online. Internet shopping was made for me: no crowds, no stress, no hassle. Apparently, these shoppers didn’t get that memo.

  Once Joe put the mall traffic in his rearview, he turned into the parking lot of the RV Rodeo, which was located next door. It was funny because with all the complaining I did about the rampant holiday consumerism, I owed it a thank you when it came to our next suspect. If it was any other time of the year, Renegade Reggie’s wouldn’t even be open at such a late hour. During the holidays, all bets were off.

  Businesses were willing to burn the midnight oil to make a sale, even an RV dealer. Thanks to the Sell-a-thon event that was going on, Joe and I were able to keep the investigative momentum going.

  My brother and I were given an over-the-top greeting by a thirty-foot-tall inflatable Santa Clause stationed right inside the entrance. I had seen a number of strange things during the course of a murder investigation, but this was near the top of the list. The inflatable Santa Clause, while ridiculously oversized, at least fit in with the spirit of the season. It was seeing it in the setting of the RV Rodeo that made me laugh.

  Renegade Reggie was a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them. The entrance to his business was decorated with an Old West façade. That western motif carried all throughout the property. While there was nothing wrong with an Old West-themed business, it did look out of place in a Florida coastal city like Hollywood.

  It wasn’t just Reggie’s business that stood out like crazy. Reggie Ward was a wild character himself. As Joe and I moved through the brisk crowd of people scoping out new recreational vehicles, I spotted Reggie wearing an all-too-familiar outfit that I recognized from his schlocky television commercials.

  The fifty-three-year-old sported a black cowboy hat, black leather cowboy boots, a tight pair of jeans overshadowed by a huge silver belt buckle, and a brown leather vest over a blue denim shirt. He had a mustache as thi
ck as his southern accent. As I looked at him, everything about him was so old school that it was practically sepia-toned.

  While our primary target for questioning was Mike Griswold, Joe and I knew it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Reggie as well. After all, perhaps he and George weren’t on the best of terms either.

  We approached Reggie armed with a slew of questions, but the RV huckster’s focus was on the crowd of customers browsing his lot. Joe called out his name to get his attention.

  “Reggie Ward,” Joe said.

  The RV huckster turned to us. “Guilty as charged. Reggie’s the name, selling is my game.” He took a moment to size us up as if he was trying to figure out how big of suckers we were. “You two look like you’re here for the Drifter 5000.”

  My face went blank with confusion. “Drifter 5000?”

  Reggie inclined his head toward a nearby behemoth of an RV and began slick-talking us. “Yeah. You guys got here just in time, too. This model is top of the line. Do you like amenities? Because this baby’s got them in spades. I’m telling you, it’s a luxury vehicle at a surprisingly affordable price. Think I’m lying? Check this out—you can get this fully loaded Drifter 5000 right now all for the rock bottom price of just a hundred and nine thousand.”

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head. Did I just hear that right? No, I couldn’t have.

  “Dollars?” I asked.

  Reggie slathered his response in sarcasm. “No. Mexican pesos.” He chuckled. “Of course, dollars.

  I looked at the RV. Granted, it was as big as a boat, but it was still a house on wheels. For that price, a person could almost buy an actual house—or they could at least put a sizable down payment on one.