“How about we make this first meeting perfect by having some of those donuts that Mrs. Shepherd made?” Nicholas suggested.
They all agreed and ran off towards the kitchen. Heather smiled. She knew it would all work out in the end, but it did make her feel special to know that her donuts were a part of sealing their new trio of friendship.
She spoke to Mrs. Copeland for a few minutes and then sent her off with a few donuts for the road. Her husband just happened to be Ryan’s boss, and he loved Heather’s gourmet donuts.
Her cell phone rang, and she saw it was Amy on the line. Since there had just been mention of best friends, she was happy to hear from her own.
“Hi Ames, how’s it going?”
“I think I’ve finally recovered from hearing all of Special Agent Connors’s questions, but I think we’re going to have to solve this case fast before we have to sit through many more of those interrogations. Is there anything we can do without him?”
“Well,” Heather said, thinking. “We might be able to retrace some of Connors’s steps without seeming to step on his toes.”
“Don’t tell me you want to get on a boat and search the seas for the missing murder weapon?”
“No,” Heather said. “But we could talk to Maria Wexler again.”
“Jamie will come over to babysit, and we’ll go investigate,” Amy said.
Heather agreed. True, it would be more interrogations after a long day. However, Maria Wexler might have some interesting information that could help them with the case. After all, she had been the one to find the body.
Roommates
“Do I really have to answer more questions?” Maria Wexler asked.
“I promise you we won’t ask as many as the last investigators,” Heather said.
“I guess I don’t really have much choice,” Maria said, admitting the P.I.s into her hotel room. “We can’t leave until this is settled, can we?”
“Don’t you want your friend’s murder settled before you go home?” Heather asked.
Maria sat on the end of her bed, while the investigators took the two chairs in the room. Heather found herself wondering where Ryan, Peters, and Connors sat when they conducted their interview. Did the trio sit in a line on the bed and face the witness? Did two investigators take the chairs and force the third to stand? With how long the interview seemed to last, it would be a shame for one of them to have to stand for such a long time. It was probably poor young Peters.
These thoughts were driven out of her head by what Maria said next. “Kasey wasn’t my friend. She was just my roommate.”
“Wow,” Amy said. “Tell us how you really feel.”
Maria groaned and laid back on the bed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t dislike Kasey. I liked her enough to want to go on vacation with her. But we weren’t best friends.”
“So, you’re not upset by her death?” Heather asked.
“Of course, I am,” Maria said, sitting straight up. “Especially since I found her body. I can’t get that image out of my head. It’s terrible. I used to complain about how she left dishes in the sink, and now she’s dead. I hate that.”
“Why were you the first one up that morning?” asked Heather.
“I don’t know,” Maria answered. “We were originally supposed to be out there to watch the sunrise. That’s why we set out so late, which I thought was funny. But then we were partying so much that it didn’t seem likely that we would see the sunrise. I woke up because I wasn’t feeling well. I went on deck to see if it was close to sunrise, but it was a little after. I saw her lying there and just screamed.”
“It must have been quite a shock,” Amy said, sympathetically.
“I had no idea that I would see that,” Maria said. “It was a terrible day. I felt so sick, to begin with and then I came across a dead body. I’ve been feeling sick since then too. A combination of emotional turmoil and being hungover. All those questions didn’t help either. It took forever.”
“Sorry about that,” Amy said. “We tried to stuff donuts in his mouth.”
“I just expected to see her steering at sunrise,” Maria said sadly. “I hate that I used to complain about her as a roommate.”
“Tell us a little bit more about Kasey,” said Heather.
Maria shrugged. “She was pretty straightforward. She was a nice girl. Didn’t really drink. Very studious. She was trying to get some prestigious internship. I could never see something like this happening to her.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” asked Heather.
“No,” said Maria. “Kasey might have left her dishes in the sink, but that’s the only reason I was annoyed with her. It’s not a reason to kill anybody. And I know I wasn’t perfect. I left socks in the bathroom. But, what I mean is, she didn’t do anything bad enough for someone to want to kill her. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Are you sure her leaving dishes in the sink isn’t enough of a reason to kill her?” Amy asked. “You mentioned it a few times. It sounds like it bothered you.”
“She’d leave them there for days and days, and they got really gross,” Maria said. “I don’t know how Sidney stood it either.”
“Sidney?”
“Our other roommate,” Maria explained. “She’s good friends with Tom and Chucky.”
“So, the three of you all lived together?” Heather asked. “And you went on vacation together?”
“This seemed like the best spring break trip,” Maria said, sighing. “I guess I was wrong about that.”
After thanking her for her time, Heather and Amy started down the hotel hall.
“I don’t know,” Amy said. “Do you think dirty dishes is enough of a reason to kill?”
“Maybe in a fit of drunken rage, it could be,” Heather said. “But her reason for getting up early sounds valid too.”
“Yeah. Someone is bound to feel sick after a night of drinking,” Amy agreed.
“Maybe the third roommate could tell us a little more about their relationship,” Heather said.
She wasn’t sure that Connors or Ryan would appreciate her decision, but she had to do something to get this case solved. She knocked on Sidney Shaw’s door.
She opened it and admitted them.
“I was waiting to be questioned,” she said, flipping her short hair around. “And I want to ask some questions too. How long is this investigation going to take? When are you going to catch this pirate killer? When can we go home? And how could this have happened?”
“We’re the ones who ask the questions,” Amy said.
“And we don’t have all the answers anyway,” Heather admitted. “We want to figure out who did this to Kasey Schwartz, and that depends on how honest you and your friends are.”
“I’ll be as honest as I can,” Sidney said. “But I was pretty wasted that night. I barely remember anything.”
“Sounds like quite a party,” said Amy.
“It was,” said Sidney. “But it ended pretty terribly.”
“Do you remember anyone acting suspiciously that night?” asked Heather.
“No,” said Sidney. “But I don’t remember much.”
This line of questioning wasn’t getting them far. Heather decided to focus on the past.
“Tell us about Kasey.”
“What’s to tell? She was really sweet and smart. She was trying to get this fancy internship. I think that’s why she didn’t want to go crazy on spring break because she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize getting it. Really, the only negative thing I could say about her was that she was a little messy as a roommate.”
“We’ve heard that,” Amy said.
“I can’t stand all those socks she would leave in the bathroom. I mean I’m not the cleanest person in the world. I might leave dirty dishes in the sink. But there’s no reason to leave that many socks in the bathroom.”
Heather and Amy each raised an eyebrow.
“It seems they were both angry at th
e wrong roommate,” Heather said to her friend.
“What was that?” asked Sidney.
“Doesn’t matter much now,” Amy muttered.
“Unless, it made someone mad enough to kill,” said Heather. She looked Sidney in the eye. “Did you or your roommate ever fight with Kasey about her messiness.”
“No,” Sidney said. “We’d just complain to each other about her. And I wouldn’t have killed her over dirty socks. No matter what I was drinking.”
“Do you know anyone who would want to hurt her?” asked Heather.
“No,” Sidney said, shaking her head. “That’s why it has to be somebody from the outside. The only person was annoyed with her was Chucky. But he’s a nice guy. He wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Why was he annoyed with her?” asked Heather.
“He was her ex-boyfriend,” Sidney said.
“Her ex-boyfriend,” Amy repeated.
“He was on the boat?” said Heather. “When she was murdered.”
The Ex-Boyfriend
“You investigated without us?” Colton Connors said. “This seems most irregular. I thought that we had mutual respect for one another, Detective Shepherd. But it seems I was wrong.”
“We didn’t mean to overstep,” Heather said quickly.
Amy also moved fast to hand out donuts to the investigative group meeting at the police station. Colton Connors was annoyed, and Ryan and Peters didn’t look pleased because of this.
“We were just trying to be thorough like you,” said Heather. “We wanted to speak to Maria Wexler like you had already done.”
“And you discovered that she was annoyed by her roommate’s habits, but claims it wasn’t a motive for murder?” asked Connors.
“And it was directed at the wrong person,” Amy muttered.
“And after learning about these roommate habits, we happened to run into Sidney Shaw at the hotel,” Heather continued. “She was Kasey Schwartz’s other roommate, and we just wanted to corroborate what we had just learned. However, then she also told us about how Kasey’s ex-boyfriend, Chucky Hall, was on the boating trip. We thought this was interesting information and wanted to tell you right away.”
“It is interesting information and is something that would have come up during the natural course of our investigation if we had been able to continue in the manner we had chosen,” Connors said. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset considering the results.”
“The young man is being escorted in now,” Ryan said. “And then we can all question him together.”
“All of us?” Heather asked.
“In the same room?” asked Amy.
“Perhaps we can modify our interrogation method from the time we talked to Calvin Green,” Connors suggested. “Perhaps the three official investigators can be inside the room, but these two can offer questions to be asked. Perhaps slip notes under the door.”
“Just like when we were in school,” Amy joked. “Except now the notes are all going to be about murder.”
“Haven’t we been helpful so far with the case?” Heather asked.
“Yes,” Connors admitted. “And I do not mean to discard something useful in regards to solving a case. However, I thought that the Coastguard and the police department could handle this on their own. Perhaps I am being sensitive because of the difficulty of my former case.”
“What case is this?” Peters asked before realizing he had just offered an open-ended question to a man who liked to talk.
“My cohorts on the job are still investigating it,” he said. “I was assigned to deal with this murder business while they continue to search for the drug traffickers. They have been very elusive, but we know some things about them. It is a gang that calls themselves the Purple Porpoises.”
“That doesn’t sound very tough,” Amy commented.
“But they are,” said Connors. “They use the name because of the speedy purple watercraft that they use to travel around in. And the purpose of this travel is to sneak drugs into the island so that they can be transported north and into the states.”
“Purple watercraft,” Heather said to herself. Somehow this detail seemed important, but she couldn’t quite place it. She listened as Connors continued to enlighten then for the next ten minutes about the progress of his other case. She hoped that their murder case would be speedier and was pleased when Chucky Hall arrived at the station.
She was less pleased when she and Amy found themselves on the other side of the two-way mirror again, watching the interrogation. Ryan apologized but said that they did need to cooperate with the other organization.
Heather understood. She wasn’t happy about it, but she understood.
“What do you think the odds are that another suspect will come in fighting mad during this interrogation?” Amy asked.
“Not too high,” said Heather. “This is the last suspect/witness that we need to talk to.”
“But by talk to you mean watch them ask the questions?” quipped Amy.
“Unfortunately,” Heather agreed. “But we can slip a question into them if we need to.”
Heather and Amy watched as the young man in the interrogation room echoed many of the same sentiments that other of his classmates had said. He had been drinking and having a good time, while Kasey had been steering the ship. They had planned on seeing the sunrise but stayed up until at least one o’clock in the morning. He didn’t know who would want to hurt her and suspected that it had to be somebody from the outside who had done it.
“Ask him about dating the victim,” Heather murmured outside the room.
“Should we slip that question inside?” asked Amy.
Heather shook her head. If the investigators in the room didn’t ask about that, they were in serious trouble. However, Ryan did talk her unheard advice and asked about his former relationship with Kasey Schwartz.
“You can’t think I killed her,” Chucky said.
“You did go on vacation with your ex?” Ryan pressed.
“Because we were fine with one another,” Chucky said. “We had decided it was for the best that we just be friends. Kasey was too focused on trying to get this fancy internship to want to go out regularly. And I just wanted to have fun senior year. We were both chill with this trip.”
“It didn’t make you mad to have her there?” Connors asked. “She wasn’t ruining your good time on the boat as she did on dry land?”
“No,” Chucky said. “Everything was fine. To be honest, since she was steering, I didn’t even see her that much that night. I was trying to impress my friend Sidney. I was starting to like her and hoped she liked me. She danced with me but got pretty drunk. I couldn’t tell if she was falling for me or not. I hoped that we’d be able to do some other romantic spring break stuff, but nothing about this trip went according to plan.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“Well, besides the obvious thing that Kasey was murdered,” Chucky said. “There were other troubles about the trip. We didn’t plan on being at sea overnight at first, but then the plans changed. And because of that, I had a truly terrible night’s sleep. I did sleep because I was so exhausted, but the bed was really uncomfortable. My back was killing me the next day.”
Connors questioned him about the bunks for sleeping on the boat, but Chucky said that he had slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.
Heather realized that there was something else that she wanted to ask Chucky Hall about and slipped the question under the door.
“What is it?” Amy asked.
“We’ve heard about this internship that Kasey Schwartz wanted from a few people now,” said Heather. “I’d just like to know more about it.”
“Do you think it could be related to her killing?”
“I don’t know,” Heather admitted. “But I’d like to hear more about it.”
The investigators in the room asked her question, and Chucky pondered it.
“I’m afraid I don’t know too much about i
t. I know Kasey talked about it a lot, but I sort of tuned it out. I do know that the accepted very few students. It was very prestigious. You should ask Miranda more about it.”
“Why Miranda?” asked Ryan.
“Because she was trying to get the same internship,” said Chucky. “I guess she has a better chance of getting it now.”
Heather looked at Amy. “I guess she does have a better chance now. Could that be a motive for murder?”
At the Table
Because Heather’s question was what had given them a new lead, she and Amy were invited to join the other investigators in the interrogation room when they brought Miranda Duncan back in. It was a little crowded in the room, but Heather thought this was for the best. Now all the investigators could join their skills to get information from the suspect.
Ryan smiled at her as they all filtered into their seats.
Amy muttered, “About time.”
Miranda Duncan looked at all the people in the room. “You’re all here to talk to me? This seems serious.”
“Murder is serious,” said Heather.
“I know that,” said Miranda. “But I didn’t have anything to do with Kasey’s death. I told you that when I spoke to you in the hallway. It had to be somebody from the outside. None of us are killers. We just wanted to have a good time on our spring break.”
“Yes. Your spring break,” Ryan said. “Your last crazy trip before having to focus on your finals and your plans for the future.”
“That’s right,” Miranda said. “We’re all juniors and seniors. We wanted to have some fun before we needed to get serious.”
“Of course, Kasey was already serious,” said Heather. “She was so focused on trying to get an internship that she didn’t want to party over spring break.”
“I guess so,” Miranda said. “Seems like a waste of a trip to me if you’re not planning on having any fun.”
“Now, Miss Duncan,” Connors said. “Through the course of our investigation, which has had many twists and turns and sidesteps, and has involved many interviews, as well as some time at sea, we have discovered that you were also interested in this coveted internship.”
Blackberry Frosted & Murder_An Oceanside Cozy Mystery Book 28 Page 5
