Destined for Trouble (A Jules Cannon Mystery Book 1)

by Claudia Lefeve

  “But why is that officer dragging Abby Lee to the station?” I asked. Then it hit me. “Do you really think she had something to do with Harvey’s death?”

  Justin wouldn’t commit to an answer, but I already knew what was happening without him spelling it out.

  Knowing there was nothing else he could say to ease my mind, he said his good-byes and left the gym, leaving me a seething, hot mess. The deputy chief knew better than to stick around when I got angry.

  Even though Justin was being tight-lipped, it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. If Abby Lee was being taken in for additional questioning, it wasn’t as a formality, because she was an employee of The Poop Deck, but as a suspect.

  As I stood there fuming, former classmates approached me to ask questions about Abby Lee, and I shrugged them off. This wasn’t the kind of attention I wanted at my ten-year reunion, so I brushed past them and stormed out of the building. As promised, I was going to wait at the police station until they released Abby Lee.

  I knew something was wrong the second I approached my truck. It was my most prized possession—Daddy’s classic 1970s Ford Bronco that had been passed down to me when I graduated high school. My mom had told me about a billion times to get rid of the clunker, but aside from some rust in the undercarriage, courtesy of the salty island air, it was still in good condition. I had left it behind after college, and Daddy never had the heart to junk it. The Bronco was the quintessential island mobile.

  And someone had taken a baseball bat to it.

  I stared at the shards of broken glass on the hood of my vintage Bronco. My insurance was going to love this—someone had gone and broken my windshield. I circled my car, trying to see if whoever did this vandalized any of the other windows. I was relieved to find only the windshield was damaged. It was the worst window to have smashed in, but at least it was the only one that needed to be replaced.

  Even though he was the last person in the world I wanted to see right now, I turned around to see if Justin’s cruiser was still in the lot. I needed an official police report for my insurance carrier, but he had already taken off.

  Guess I’ll just have to take care of it myself. It was just broken glass after all. It was probably just some drunken classmate who’d mistaken my windshield for someone else’s. Or maybe my low-cut halter dress turned some heads after all and made some female classmate jealous. Who knows? Tempers always run high when there’s a reunion going on.

  The weather forecast was calling for clear skies over the next couple of days, but still, I was now stuck driving around without a windshield until I could take it to the shop. I brushed the glass off the hood as best I could, and as I tried to remove stray pieces of glass from the interior, I found a note on the driver’s side seat:

  I’m watching you.

  CHAPTER NINE

  We didn’t want to upset Abby Lee’s mother, especially in her frail condition, so after I picked Abby Lee up from the police station, we headed straight to The Poop Deck so she could give me a rundown of what had happened. The restaurant had been closed for hours by this point, but as the new owner, Abby Lee had a set of keys.

  She’d just spent several hours with the police, and I felt bad for what I was about to do, but if I was going to help my friend, I wanted to get a feel for what the police were thinking. Sitting behind a desk as a crime analyst didn’t exactly make me a subject matter expert on police interrogations, but I figured I had a leg up over your average Joe.

  The two of us resumed our normal positions at the restaurant: Abby Lee behind the bar, pouring me a glass of red wine, and me in front of the bar, waiting to take a long sip.

  Abby Lee looked like hell. If no one had known she had been picked up by the police and questioned over the death of her former friend and employer, just one look at her would have given it away. She’d only been in their custody a few hours, but she looked like she’d spent the night there.

  She’d barely placed the glass of wine in front of me before I started to barrage her with my own line of questioning—the part I hated having to do.

  “What happened? Do they really suspect you killed him? What evidence do they have? You didn’t tell them anything, did you?”

  The idea that Abby Lee had murdered Harvey was ridiculous. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body, much less the capacity to kill someone. I mentally cursed Deputy Chief Douche Bag for allowing this to happen.

  Abby Lee shook her head. “They didn’t tell me very much other than the coroner’s report came back, and they don’t think it was a heart attack like they originally thought. They seem to think he was poisoned.”

  I nodded. I’d imagined they had already determined Harvey’s death wasn’t due to natural causes. A fact confirmed earlier by Mom’s gossip circle. But the fact that he was poisoned was certainly new information to me.

  In Texas, unless the deceased was under a doctor’s care or had a known, documented illness like cancer or heart disease, the medical examiner always ran an autopsy to confirm cause of death, even when natural causes were suspected. But I was a little surprised they’d actually had sufficient time to rule out natural causes.

  I didn’t want to lose momentum, so I continued. “What about Sheila?” I thought back to the day of the funeral. Apart from losing the restaurant, Sheila had looked rather pleased about receiving the house and whatever money Harvey had left in his accounts. Could she have murdered Harvey? That theory sure as hell made a lot more sense than Abby Lee. If you believed Abby Lee—and I did—she wasn’t aware of the contents in Harvey’s will until the reading, so what motive could she possibly have to murder him? That should have been enough to prove there was no premeditation on her part.

  And no one knew much about Sheila’s life before she moved to Trouble. If you asked me, she should be the one in the hot seat. It was basic Criminology 101: it’s almost always the spouse.

  “Oh, they questioned her, too. I bumped into her at the station as she was leaving, but since I was the one who inherited The Poop Deck, I guess I’m just as much a prime suspect as she is.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said. What were the police thinking? I had a mind to go over to the station myself and have a few choice words with Justin. Heaven help me, I was beginning to sound like Aunt Lula and Mom.

  “Oh, no,” Abby Lee said. “I know that look. Don’t get involved on my account. I’m sure the police will figure it out and find the person responsible.”

  She was putting up a brave front, but I could see the tearstained streaks on her cheeks. She’d obviously cried during the interview, which led me to believe it was more of an interrogation than a few simple questions. But they did release her, which also told me they didn’t have enough evidence to charge her with anything—yet.

  “You’ve been in Trouble too long,” I said, taking a long swig of my wine. “This is a small island. They don’t handle cases like they do in the big cities.” I didn’t think for one second this investigation would be handled like the feds or even larger police departments would handle it. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the local cops to do their jobs, but I knew they didn’t have the resources, not to mention the experience, to handle a murder investigation. I couldn’t even remember the last time Trouble had a homicide. And trust me, even in my absence, my mom would have told me if there had been one.

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?” Abby Lee asked.

  Abby Lee was right, but there had to be a way to help her.

  “I hate to have you repeat everything you just told the police, which by the way, I still can’t believe you told them anything at all without an attorney present, but tell me exactly what happened the last time you saw Harvey. And don’t leave anything out.” With any luck we could try to piece together what happened that night and clear her off the suspect list.

  She let out a sigh and started from the beginning. “I think I might h
ave been the last person to see Harvey alive.”

  I sat there stunned for a moment. First off, he was killed the night of my welcome-home party—a party attended by most of the island. Second, how would anyone really determine the last person to see Harvey alive with a guest list that large? Normally, being the last person to see the victim alive wasn’t good news, but I knew my friend was innocent. I really wanted to prompt her along and ask more questions, but I knew it was best to let her ease into her story. I’d try to stay quiet until after she finished.

  “According to the witnesses—the police wouldn’t say who—they said they saw me talking to Harvey right before he left. They didn’t see him talk to anyone else after that.”

  Says who? It was enough to make my mind spin (although by this time maybe the wine was to blame). Who’s to say Harvey didn’t talk to one more person before he dropped to his death on the side of my parents’ backyard?

  “Did he say anything to you before you left?” There had to be something we were missing.

  Abby Lee shook her head. “Not really. Harvey was on his way home. He said Sheila hadn’t been feeling well, so he was ducking out early to check in on her. Then he said good night and that he’d see me in the morning.”

  It was a stupid question, but I had to ask. “Did you tell any of this to the police?” Everything Abby Lee had said sounded innocent enough to me. Did the police honestly think she was a suspect? So far, the case was circumstantial at best. And that was a far stretch.

  Her eyes welled up again. “I tried, but they kept asking the same questions.”

  I nodded. That was standard in police interrogations—repeat the same questions over and over hoping to get a different response. The idea was that suspects would crack under pressure and change their story. “I see. What else did they ask?”

  “The usual, I suppose. When did I leave the party . . . did Harvey and I leave together . . . was there anyone who could back up my story . . . I tried to tell them that all we said was good-bye, but they stuck to the same questions,” she said.

  “What about the restaurant? Did they ask you anything about that?” By now, everyone knew about Harvey leaving the restaurant to Abby Lee. If the will had been read in the privacy of the lawyer’s office, instead of in front of the whole population of Trouble, news of her inheritance might have taken a few more days to get around town. But since it was public knowledge, it only stood to reason the police would have heard and questioned her about it. Especially if they were looking for motive.

  “They asked if I knew anything about his will prior to his death,” she said, fresh tears springing from her eyes. “Honestly, Jules, I had no idea he was leaving me the restaurant. I told them that, but they didn’t seem to believe me.”

  A huge knot formed in the pit of my stomach—my best friend was about to get railroaded. I had been trained to believe that the system always worked. Hell, I was employed by the system. Damn it, I believed in the system. But I had to remind myself again that this wasn’t DC. We were dealing with a small-town police department that didn’t have the experience or manpower to investigate a murder. For them, it would be easier to play the odds and hope that the last person to see Harvey alive was the killer, who coincidentally also stood to gain from his death.

  “Did they tell you anything else? Did they actually say you were a suspect?”

  “No, but they said I was a person of interest and not to leave the island.”

  The good news was she hadn’t been arrested yet. “You have options,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure what those options were at the moment, but surely there had to be something we could do.

  “Like what?”

  An idea struck me. “We’re going to find Harvey’s killer and clear your name.” Of course I said this with more confidence than I actually felt. I might work for the bureau, but I knew absolutely squat about investigative techniques aside from the basics I’d managed to pick up from the agents I worked with.

  “What? You’d do that for me?” Abby Lee asked.

  “Of course. I can’t let my best friend go to jail for something she didn’t do. Plus, we can’t let his killer get away with murder. We owe it to Harvey.” The more I spoke, the more I slowly started to convince myself that we could actually pull this off. This time it had to be the wine talking, but it sounded like a solid plan.

  “Can’t we get in trouble for interfering?”

  “Let me worry about that,” I said. “What do we know so far?” If we put our heads together, maybe we could figure out a motive or suspect.

  “Like what?”

  Like a smoking gun, I thought. But that would be easier said than done. “Anything that could help steer the investigation away from you. Think, Abby Lee. What do we know about Harvey that could possibly get him killed?”

  Abby Lee thought about it as I polished off the last of my wine. She quickly refilled my glass without me having to ask. God bless her. “Sheila. She seems obsessed with taking over the restaurant.”

  “OK, that’s a start. We’ll add her to the list of possible suspects.”

  “He obviously made the provisions in his will a secret,” she went on. “So how would anyone know what he had planned? I mean, I had no idea he was leaving me the restaurant . . .”

  “And that’s why the cops are looking in the wrong direction.” At some point he must have changed his will in order to add Abby Lee as the sole beneficiary of his restaurant. And if it was that recent, there was a high probability that someone else thought they were inheriting The Poop Deck, not Abby Lee. Which meant thoughtful planning and premeditation on the part of the killer.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Ugh, I don’t know! I just can’t imagine anyone killing Harvey.”

  “Me neither, but someone did,” I pointed out.

  My gut was telling me The Poop Deck was key to the investigation. And my instincts were never wrong. Except when it came to men.

  I thought back to the reading of the will. It just seemed unlikely that there would have been another motive for someone to murder him. Harvey didn’t have any enemies, he wasn’t a philanderer (or it would have been all over the Daily Gossip), and although his restaurant did fairly well, it wasn’t like he was a wealthy restaurateur. But despite his lack of great wealth, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had high hopes for the restaurant and was now a disappointed killer.

  “Jules, I’m tired. I think maybe I should get home. Mother’s probably worried about me.”

  I glanced at my watch. I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late. The reunion would have ended hours ago. “You’re probably right,” I said. “You need to get some sleep after what you’ve just been through. We can brainstorm some more tomorrow.”

  She looked hopeful. Or at least like she was comforted by the fact that someone was in her corner. “Do you really think we can figure out who did this to Harvey?”

  My heart broke. I knew how the system worked, and the way things were going, it didn’t look good for Abby Lee. I was determined, more now than ever, to help my friend.

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. “But we’re going to need some help.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I hoped I could back up my promise.

  “Who, Justin? I don’t think—”

  I snorted. “No, I have someone else in mind.”

  It was akin to making a pact with the devil, but the way I saw it, she owed me one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  True to my word, I ventured out first thing in the morning to gather intel. Since I didn’t have much confidence that the local police would be pounding the pavement for new leads, I went in search of the one person who could help me gather enough information on Harvey and his widow—Aunt Lula.

  Once, I assisted on a RICO case against some notorious family with mob connections in New Jersey. All I have to say is, these
guys had nothing on Aunt Lula. Come to think of it, even the FBI could learn a thing or two from her. My aunt had a network of associates and underground informants that went beyond the island. Mob bosses used fear and intimidation, while Aunt Lula killed people with kindness. She even had folks from the tristate area who owed her favors. Simply put, my aunt traded in secrets. Any organized-crime syndicate would envy her cache of informants and spies, and the finesse with which she garnered such information. Aunt Lula didn’t have to resort to violence to be feared. In her world, people didn’t fear death, they feared being ostracized.

  So it was on this bright, sunny morning I came to ask Doña Lula for a favor.

  Aunt Lula captured the true essence of women in the South—she was the embodiment of the Texas frontier spirit. She could feel at home at the ballet or be comfortable hanging out with the menfolk for a day of dove hunting. I swear the woman would wear blue jeans with her pearls—if she actually owned a pair of denim. So it wasn’t so unusual that she and her friends were members of the Trouble Island Ladies Trap & Skeet Club.

  Being a hunter myself—having been taught by my dad how to shoot by the time I was ten—I respected the women’s marksmanship and skill, but as I met the women early Saturday morning, I began to truly understand the club’s appeal. Spread out across the wooden platform, I found the aging quartet, donned in pristine khaki hunting garb, each taking turns shooting skeet while sipping cocktails in between rounds. To them, it was like playing a round of golf, only with ammo. Per town ordinance, they practiced over on the far end of the island, far away from the center of town.

  “Pull!” yelled one of the women.

  A shotgun blast rang out, followed by, “Damn.” The clay pigeon was still intact, getting smaller as it flew over the dunes into the brush.

  “You’re getting rusty in your old age, Ginny,” commented one of the women.