The Name of the Game is Murder (A Clarissa Spencer Cozy Mystery Book 6)

by Alaine Allister

  “Okay,” Clarissa sighed. “I’m leaving town soon and I had hoped I’d be able to put a lid on this case first. But nothing is working in my favor. I managed to get my hands on the security footage from the hospital, but since there were only a few days on there –”

  “Pardon me?” Francine interrupted. “Security footage is kept for 60 days – hospital policy.”

  “Are you sure? I definitely didn’t get 60 days of security footage.”

  “Well then you didn’t get all of it,” Francine insisted. She thought for a moment and then seemed to make her mind up about something. “Give me your phone number,” she said, pulling her phone out of her purse. “I’ll stop by the hospital and talk to the security guy.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?” Clarissa asked as she entered her number into Francine’s phone.

  “No – I didn’t really feel like painting my kitchen today anyway,” Francine replied. “This gives me an excuse to get out of it. Trust me: you’re the one doing me a favor. I’ll give you a call as soon as I have something to tell you.”

  “Are you working tomorrow?” Clarissa asked.

  “Yes, I’m on night shift this week. Why?”

  “I’m sending a box of donuts to the hospital for you,” Clarissa grinned.

  Chapter 19

  “That was quick,” Parker said when Clarissa got back into the car.

  “The door was locked,” Clarissa replied. “I guess the hardware store is closed today.”

  “Huh. What now? Should we go see if your parents are back from lunch?”

  “I guess so.”

  They began to drive. Suddenly Clarissa bolted upright. “Stop the car! Look!” she exclaimed, pointing out the window. “That’s Dave Carey’s truck parked by the pharmacy!”

  “Well that’s lucky. Gotta love small towns, huh? But you’d think a small town would have better parking on Main Street, no? There’s no place to park out front,” Parker grumbled as the driver behind him began to honk. “Hang on. I’ll go around the block.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Clarissa insisted. “Just drop me off right here. If I don’t return this watch soon I’ll forget about it and wind up taking it back to Sugarcomb Lake with me!” With that, she jumped out of the car, waved at the impatient driver behind Parker and dashed into the pharmacy.

  The last time Clarissa was at the pharmacy, it had been busy.

  Today was the opposite.

  She soon found out why.

  “Shop’s closed for the afternoon,” the pharmacist told her as he emerged from behind the counter. He looked paler than Clarissa remembered, and his eyes were glassy. His long white coat was folded up and tucked over his arm. As he moved, he appeared to be wobbling slightly.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “No, but I will be. I think I caught a bug from one of my customers. I’m going home to rest,” the pharmacist announced. “If you’re here for over-the-counter medications, our cashier Megan can ring you up at the front. I – oh! I think I’m going to be sick!”

  As the ill man began to gag, Clarissa thought fast. In her spare time, she loved to study up on spells and potions. She was no pharmacist, but she knew a thing or two about mixing up concoctions. She began to frantically dig through her giant handbag.

  “Here!” she said, thrusting a small vial of spices at him. “Sprinkle this on your tongue!”

  “What is it?” the pharmacist asked, looking positively miserable as he tried not to vomit.

  “It’s an, er…it’s an old family recipe,” Clarissa told him, unable to come up with a better explanation. “I know it’s unconventional and probably weird that I’m giving you this. But it’s completely harmless, I promise. It will help with your nausea. Trust me, it works.”

  With a shrug, the pharmacist stuck out his tongue and shook the vial over it.

  He coughed as his tongue was coated in the dark, powdery substance.

  “I taste cinnamon, ginger and something I can’t quite put my finger on,” he said.

  Clarissa nodded.

  “I…I actually do feel slightly better!” he told her. “My stomach quit churning!”

  She smiled. “Go home and rest,” she told him.

  “If you’re not careful you’re going to put me out of a job,” the pharmacist joked.

  It wasn’t until the pharmacist had left that Clarissa remembered why she was there. She made a beeline to the front of the store to ask the young woman working the cash register if she had seen Dave Carey.

  Unfortunately, the cashier was on the phone.

  By the sound of it, she was gabbing about boys with a friend.

  Clarissa stood there impatiently, tapping her foot. The cashier glanced right at her but continued talking. After a moment, Clarissa cleared her throat loudly. The young woman didn’t pay her the slightest bit of attention. She was far too busy gabbing.

  “Excuse me,” Clarissa finally said.

  The young woman had the nerve to turn her back on Clarissa.

  “Well that’s just excellent customer service,” Clarissa muttered to herself sarcastically.

  Since the cashier was extremely unhelpful, Clarissa turned on her heel and walked away. She would simply have to search the store herself. Hopefully Dave Carey was still inside…she really didn’t want to spend the rest of the day trying to track him down to return his stupid watch.

  She spotted a mop and bucket at the back of the pharmacy.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

  Dave had mentioned that he did janitorial work for a number of businesses. As a matter of fact, Clarissa was pretty sure he had said he cleaned the pharmacy on occasion. Apparently that’s what he was doing…except he was nowhere to be found.

  Clarissa poked her head into the back room that had an “employees only” sign on the door.

  Dave was back there, his back to the door. Clarissa nearly called out to him, but she thought better of it when she got a closer look. He wasn’t doing janitorial work. Instead, he was rummaging purposefully through a mail bin.

  Suddenly Clarissa’s cell phone began to ring.

  She jumped.

  So did Dave.

  He whirled around, his eyes wide and frantic looking. When he saw Clarissa standing in the doorway, he dropped the package he was holding back into the bin like it was made of molten lava. He looked guilty as sin.

  Clarissa’s phone was still ringing. It was a number she didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?” she said, her eyes still locked with Dave’s.

  “It’s Francine calling from the hospital. I asked the security guard about the missing footage from the surveillance tapes. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He said he has the full 60 days on tape, per hospital rules.”

  “That’s weird,” Clarissa said.

  “I know. I asked him for a copy, which he was more than happy to hand over. But he also said he doesn’t know why I’m so interested. He said after the janitor asked him for a copy of the footage, he got curious and reviewed it himself.”

  “What did he find?” Clarissa demanded.

  “That’s the thing,” Francine replied. “The security guard didn’t see anything unusual at all. Nobody accessed the medication room other than the staff members with the proper permissions. In fact, he told me there’s nothing interesting on there, except for one of our doctors making out with three different colleagues in the same week.”

  “That sounds like a story in and of itself.”

  “I know,” Francine laughed. “Anyway, if you want to pick up the security footage and take a look for yourself, feel free to stop by the hospital tomorrow night during my shift.”

  “Okay, thanks. Bye.”

  When Clarissa hung up the phone, Dave was still staring at her.

  “I’m sorry for startling you,” she told him, sensing hostility on his part. Maybe he was still worked up after being denied entry to the racetrack. Clarissa decided it was in her best interest to try to keep Dave
calm, so she gave him a big, friendly smile.

  “You’re not supposed to be back here!” he said gruffly.

  Okay, so apparently being friendly wasn’t going to work.

  That was okay.

  Clarissa was more than willing to take a different approach.

  “Are you supposed to be back here?” she asked, standing her ground. She crossed her arms and stared the janitor down as she turned the tables on him. “I’m pretty sure going through the pharmacy’s mail isn’t in your job description.”

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want something?”

  All sorts of alarms were going off in Clarissa’s head. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the wristwatch she and Parker had found at the beach. “Here,” she said, holding it out to him. “I think this belongs to you.”

  Dave grabbed the watch and stuffed it into his pocket. He didn’t say thank you, or even acknowledge that Clarissa had gone out of her way to return his lost property. He seemed aggressive, like he desperately wanted to be rid of her.

  But Clarissa wasn’t ready to leave yet.

  She brazenly walked over to the mail bin and looked inside.

  It was full of packages of various sizes. She picked one up and read the label.

  Then she looked up at Dave with an expression of understanding. “These are pills – prescription medications, as a matter of fact. They’re the orders the pharmacist hasn’t had a chance to open, aren’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Dave mumbled, averting his eyes.

  “Oh, but I think you do,” Clarissa insisted. “I just got the strangest phone call. Apparently the hospital keeps security camera footage for 60 days. But there were only a few days of footage on the copy you gave me. You erased the rest, didn’t you?”

  “That’s ludicrous,” Dave scoffed. “Why would I do that? Jeez, I try to help you out and look what happens. You start accusing me of all sorts of nonsense. You’re insane, you know that? Now get out of here and let me get back to work.”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere yet,” Clarissa informed him boldly. She scratched her chin thoughtfully. “You were awfully eager for me to jump to the conclusion that Sue stole drugs from the hospital. Why is that?”

  “What do you mean? She’s stolen drugs from the hospital before. Everyone knows about it. She resells the prescription medications to feed her gambling habit,” Dave said with a sneer. “You can’t prove it wasn’t her. And Sue probably erased the security camera footage herself!”

  “That doesn’t even make sense. The footage was only missing from the copy you gave me.” The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. “I get it now.” Clarissa shook her head in disgust. “You were trying to frame Sue for Bobby’s murder.”

  Dave scowled. “That’s absurd. I take offense to that!”

  “You can deny it all you want, but I see you for what you really are,” Clarissa told him. “When I walked in here a moment ago, you were checking the mail to see if there was anything worth stealing. Weren’t you?”

  “Of course not,” Dave snapped. “You have a lot of nerve to suggest that I would ever –”

  “It wasn’t the first time, either. You’ve stolen prescription medication from the pharmacy’s mail bin before, haven’t you?” Clarissa took a menacing step forward, her eyes narrowed. “This is where you got the drugs that killed Bobby, isn’t it Dave?”

  Instead of answering, Dave turned to run.

  Clarissa knew she couldn’t overpower the man. He towered over her and outweighed her by quite a bit. But thankfully, she didn’t need physical strength to stop him from leaving. All she needed was the help of a well-executed little spell.

  Summoning her inner strength, Clarissa turned her attention to a large cardboard box on the floor. She forced herself to concentrate as she stared at it, envisioning what she wanted it to do. As Dave ran out the door, the box slid over until it sat right in his path.

  He didn’t even see what hit him.

  He went sprawling across the floor, landing hard.

  Silently, Clarissa was doing a happy dance. It was so gratifying when her magic worked.

  But despite her celebratory mood, she deliberately remained stone-faced. She wanted Dave to squirm. And as she advanced on him, he appeared to be doing exactly that.

  Dave’s face was ashen and he looked like he wanted to get up and run.

  But there was nowhere to go. He was caught and they both knew it.

  Clarissa pulled out her phone. After calling the police, who assured her that an officer was on his way, she hung up. Then she looked at Dave. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Bobby was your friend. Why kill him?”

  “Some friend,” Dave grunted. He had picked himself up off the floor. Now he was standing there sullenly, his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down. “Last time I checked, friends don’t sue each other.”

  “Bobby was suing you?”

  “He was going to,” Dave replied. “He loaned me money to buy the hardware shop. The past little while, he started hounding me to pay it back. He knew my financial situation. He knew I could barely afford to keep the lights on. But he didn’t care.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He said if I didn’t pay him back by the end of the month, he’d sue me. He seemed to delight in threatening me. It was like a game to him! He said he’d take me for everything I had and yank my business right out from under me. I couldn’t have that.”

  “So you took on extra work?”

  “Yeah…and I started going to the racetrack as often as I could. One big win would solve all my problems, you know? But I never had a big win. I just kept losing money. I begged Bobby to cut me a break. I begged him to give me more time. But he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “So you killed him to make sure he wouldn’t sue you?”

  Dave scowled. “I didn’t mean to kill Bobby. It said on the label not to take the pills if you have a heart condition. I figured they would make him sick. Maybe they would make him really sick. I didn’t know, exactly…I’m no doctor. I just knew if Bobby was laid up it would give me more time to come up with the money.”

  “You don’t seem very remorseful,” Clarissa observed.

  “What do you want from me? Bobby wasn’t a true friend. He was no better than one of those payday advance scams,” Dave muttered bitterly. “You know why he loaned people money, don’t you? It wasn’t that he was a nice guy. It was because he enjoyed having the upper hand.”

  “Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t make it okay for you to commit murder,” Clarissa pointed out. “You took Bobby’s life and were more than willing to let Sue take the fall for it. Who does that, Dave? That’s pretty cold, calculated behavior.”

  “I’m the victim in all this!” he insisted.

  “I guess you can explain all that to a judge,” Clarissa shrugged. She wasn’t about to argue with someone who was delusional, deranged and lacking empathy. Why bother? She was pretty sure there was no point in trying to reason with Dave.

  Her phone began to ring again. She glanced down at the screen and saw it was Parker calling.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi! You’re hard to keep track of! Where are you?” her boyfriend wanted to know. “I was in the pharmacy a moment ago but I couldn’t find you.”

  “Oh, I’m still inside. I’m in the back room,” Clarissa told him. “Where are you?”

  “I came back to the car. What are you doing in the back room?” Parker asked curiously.

  “Uh, long story.”

  “Will you be out soon?”

  “You should probably come back inside. I think I may be here for a while.” Clarissa shot a glance at Dave, who was staring intently at his feet. “I can’t exactly leave right now…I’m waiting for the police to get here.”

  “The police are coming? What’s wrong? Did you find Dave?” Parker demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Parker told her, reading bet
ween the lines.

  The second the call ended, Dave lunged at Clarissa. He knocked her phone from her hands, causing it to fall to the floor. Then he wrapped his big, meaty hands around her throat and began to violently choke her.

  Chapter 20

  “You think you’re so smart,” Dave growled menacingly, his face inches from Clarissa’s.

  She squirmed beneath him with all her might, but it was no use. Dave had her pinned, his substantial body weight crushing her to the floor. To make matters worse, he was trying to strangle her to death with his bare hands.

  “You’re not going to ruin my life,” Dave told Clarissa as his hands squeezed tighter and tighter around her neck. “You should have minded your own business. But no, you had to snoop. So now you have to die.”

  Clarissa’s eyes bugged out of her head as she struggled in vain for air. She was fighting a losing battle. Not even her magic could save her. Her body was in panic mode and her brain was becoming increasingly air deprived. That meant she couldn’t concentrate well enough to perform even the simplest of spells.

  Was this is?

  Was this how she died, on the cold, hard cement floor of a storage room?

  In a way, it paralleled Bobby Bates’ untimely demise.

  As the room closed in around her, Clarissa stared up at the bare lightbulb above her. It was flickering wildly, almost as though it was trying to convey a message to her. But she was far too oxygen starved to try to make sense of it.

  Her head was swimming, and her chest hurt like it had never hurt before. Her lungs ached something terrible. Suddenly Dave seemed very far away. In fact, everything seemed very far away. Clarissa’s eyes rolled back in her head as she felt herself begin to lose consciousness.

  That was when the door burst open.

  Clarissa was dimly aware of some shouting and a struggle. Then Dave’s hands loosened from around her neck. The next thing she knew, he had been knocked right off of her – and she could breathe again.

  She began to cough. Then she gulped in air greedily as her lungs began to spasm in relief.

  It took a moment for Clarissa to regain her senses. For a while, all she could do was breathe.