Murder Over Mochas

by Caroline Fardig

  I sighed, putting my head in my hands. “I can’t believe she did it.”

  “Really? I thought she was your number-one suspect.”

  “Well, she was, but…I don’t know. I mean, yes, the evidence on her is compelling. It’s just…I guess I wanted to blame her, but at the same time I don’t want to believe that she actually had it in her to do it.”

  “I get it. You worked side by side with her for a long time, right?”

  I nodded. “As long as I’ve worked with some of my staff at Java Jive. It would shock me just as much if any of them did something like this. It’s not what you’d expect from someone you think you know so well.” Blowing out a breath, I added, “It’s difficult to be angry with her when she took care of punishing herself for what she did.”

  He put his arm around me and left it there while we waited for the Liberty Police Department to show up. It was only minutes before we heard the wail of sirens approaching. The circus was about to begin.

  Two plainclothes detectives got out of the first police vehicle and approached us. One of them was someone I’d known practically all my life.

  “Jack,” I said, standing and walking over to meet them. Ryder followed behind me.

  Jack Harrison, who’d been a classmate of mine since kindergarten, smiled. “Juliet. I never dreamed we’d find you out here. How are you?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Sure, I’m sorry.” He gestured to the other detective. “This is my partner, Detective William Johnson.”

  William waved. He was another one I remember being a few classes behind me in school.

  I said, “This is Detective Ryder Hamilton.”

  The three men shook hands as Jack said, “Nice to put a face with a voice. You keeping Callahan in line down in Nashville?”

  Ryder’s fellow MNPD detective, Brody Callahan, had worked for the Liberty PD briefly and had given Ryder a contact there, which I guessed turned out to be Jack.

  Ryder smiled. “He’s doing fine.”

  Jack nodded. “Good to know. We miss him here. Now I hate to break up the pleasantries, but I hear we have a death to attend to. We’ll be back around to get your statements in a while.” He gestured to Ryder’s car, which was blocked in by several emergency vehicles. “Looks like you couldn’t go anywhere if you wanted to.”

  Ryder pointed them in the direction of the cellar, and they were on their way, followed by a few uniforms who pushed us back from the cabin and began taping off the perimeter with crime scene tape. The coroner followed.

  Ryder and I found a big tree out of the way and sat with our backs against it, in the shade of its leaves.

  He said, “Do you have a problem with this?”

  I rolled my head toward him. “I have all sorts of problems with this.”

  “I don’t mean it that way. I mean, Mandi texted you that she was going to end it all, then we sped out here—it took about seven minutes. With this type of hanging, which was done with little to no drop to break her neck because there simply wasn’t enough headspace down in the cellar, I think it would have taken longer than that for her to be dead by the time we showed up. It could take upward of twenty minutes for that type of noose to have strangled her.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to think too hard about this. “Maybe her text took a long time to get through. It’s pretty rural out here. Maybe her cell signal was bad.”

  “Maybe she had help.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Like someone killed her and made it look like she committed suicide?”

  “It happens.”

  I did not want to add a new wrinkle to this case. “But the original way makes more sense.”

  “Didn’t you say only a few minutes ago that you found it hard to believe she killed Scott?”

  “What I want to believe is that this is over. Don’t go muddying things up for me with your facts, Detective.”

  Ryder grinned. “You hate it when I come up with facts, don’t you?”

  “Only always. Besides, if Mandi didn’t kill herself because of her guilt over Scott, then this case is not solved. That means I’m still on Delaney’s radar.”

  “And of course there’s the mild inconvenience that a killer is on the loose.”

  I smiled. “Look, I’m trying really hard to make this about me, okay? Just go with it.”

  That got a snicker out of him. “Okay. But that means we have more investigating to do.”

  Groaning, I said, “This thing here is going to put a big cramp in our plans. It’ll be hours before we can get back to work.”

  “Since the time frame is a little fishy, I’m betting they’ll want to take us to their station to make our statements, so we have that to look forward to.”

  After some time had passed, the two detectives came ambling up to us. William said, “We think it would be best to take your statements at the station.”

  Ryder gave me his “I told you so” smile and extended his hand to help me up off the ground.

  Jack gave me an apologetic smile. “Juliet, we’ll give you a ride. Hamilton, you can drive your vehicle over.”

  Of course. Because I hadn’t had enough riding in the back of a police car in the past week. As we were heading to their vehicle, I heard my name being called. Blake and Lizzie were waving wildly at me from behind the outer perimeter of the crime scene tape. This was sure to be front-page news in tomorrow’s Chronicle. How I was going to manage to keep my name out of the article would be a story in itself.

  —

  The building housing the police station in Liberty used to be the town’s library when I was a kid, so I’d been in there countless times. Once it had been turned into the police station, though, I hadn’t been in it again until now. (My life of crime hadn’t begun until I moved to Nashville.) Funny how the place still had a faint aroma of old books along with the requisite stale coffee and gun cleaner smell of a police department.

  Since we’d grown up together, Jack excused himself from questioning me and turned me over to William, who seemed nice enough although fairly businesslike. William showed me to a suffocatingly small room in the basement, which I vaguely remembered being in as a child. He left for what seemed like hours, and when he finally returned, he sat down across from me at a metal table, the room eerily quiet while he perused the file he brought with him.

  “So you’re a PI, Ms. Langley,” he said.

  I bit back a sigh, so not ready to do this yet another time. “Yes. You can call me Juliet. We did go to high school together, if only for a year or so.”

  “Sorry, force of habit. Juliet, you’re here investigating Scott O’Malley’s death, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  After a pause, he asked, “Who contracted you to do that?”

  “No one. This is a personal matter.”

  “Because you were at one time engaged to the victim or because you were the last person to see him alive?”

  “Look, William, I know you already know the answers to these questions. This isn’t my first time being interrogated.”

  His mouth pulled up in the corner, but he didn’t crack a smile. “This is only an interview.”

  “Right. That’s what they all say. Why don’t you cut to the chase? I’m sure you’ve talked to Detective Delaney about me.”

  Nodding, he replied, “I have. He’s not your biggest fan.”

  “It’s mutual.”

  “He says you’re a viable suspect in Scott O’Malley’s death. Today you find his wife’s dead body. I can’t imagine the two of you have been close after she ran off with your fiancé last year.”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “Yet you are the one person she decides to inform that she’s about to end it all.”

  Yeah, I found that a little strange, too. “She knew I wanted to get to the bottom of who killed Scott, so maybe this was her way of making amends with me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

 
; William eyed me for a moment. “Let’s talk some more before I tell you what I think. In your investigation, did you find any evidence that would suggest that Mandi O’Malley had killed her husband, like her text to you stated?”

  I trusted Jack, but I didn’t know if I trusted this guy. He was Jack’s partner, which had to count for something. Plus, if I didn’t give up my info, it would only get me into more trouble, and Jack was interviewing Ryder, who probably felt a duty to share anything he knew with a fellow cop. I only hoped anything I said wouldn’t later be used against me.

  So, I started at the beginning and told him everything. Well, nearly everything. I wasn’t about to include any sensitive facts that would come back and bite me in the butt, like stealing evidence, multiple B and E’s, and the small matter of having to disarm Mandi when she held me at gunpoint for intruding in her home. From punching Scott in the nose to finding Mandi a short time ago, I walked him through my investigation and laid out all the dirt we’d uncovered so far, including the blackmail and drug theft Scott was mixed up in.

  William blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair, running his hands through his closely cropped blond hair. “That’s a lot of information.”

  “Tell me about it. What we’ve been stumbling over is what is and what isn’t pertinent to Scott’s death.”

  He leafed through the file and perused one of the reports. “They’re leaning toward drug overdose or poisoning as his COD. I’ve talked to a few of his friends and family members, and none of them seemed to be shocked to find out it was an overdose. Are you only investigating this to exonerate yourself or do you know something no one else does?”

  “I know how Scott was acting when he came to talk to me. He was convinced Mandi had been kidnapped by these ‘dangerous and powerful people’ he’d stolen some kind of information from. If he’d overdosed on purpose, why come to me and ask me for my help? When people get to that point, don’t they just hang at home and wait to die?”

  Shrugging, he replied, “I agree with you there. But what about the possibility of an accidental overdose?”

  “I guess that can’t be ruled out, but come on. He was a drug rep. Surely he was educated on dosage amounts. He was a smart enough guy.”

  “Unless he’d been using for so long he had to up his dose to get a high.”

  “Doesn’t that come after more prolonged drug use, though? According to his friends, he hadn’t been acting strangely for a terribly long time. A few months at the most.”

  “Okay, let’s say this wasn’t an OD. Let’s say it was a poisoning, and his wife did it. If she was missing—or at least he thought she was—how did she slip him the substance that killed him without him seeing her? It would have had to go in his food or drink, and it would have had to have been done shortly before he showed up at your coffeehouse.”

  I stared at him. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but he was right. Mandi could have easily slipped anything she wanted into his food or drinks at home, or even at the office for that matter, unnoticed. But he was in Nashville looking for her, so how did she get close enough to poison him without him seeing her? She couldn’t have.

  Unless…I remembered Pete finding a sack of snacks and drinks in Scott’s hotel room. Mandi could have snuck into his room while he was out—possibly when he was at Java Jive getting punched in the nose by me—and put the poison or drugs in his food or drinks. That was a tidbit I couldn’t give up to the cops, though. And it proved nothing—if Mandi could have snuck in there and done the deed, anyone could have.

  I said, “Well, it looks like someone needs to find out what Scott did before he came and saw me on Saturday evening.”

  “Detective Delaney is looking into it.”

  “Forgive me if that instills no confidence whatsoever in us ever finding out what really happened to Scott.”

  “I have to ask this—did you kill Mandi O’Malley?”

  Seriously? I thought we were having a nice chat here. “No, I did not. I can give you a list of the places I’ve been this morning, which you can use to verify that I was nowhere near that cabin until well after she was dead.”

  “Okay, start listing,” he replied, pen poised to take notes.

  “Chronicle office, Liberty Minute Clinic, and the gas station on Main and Jefferson.”

  He quit writing and popped his head up. “Chronicle office? Don’t tell me you’re working with Lizzie on this murder investigation.”

  “Why? You got a problem with her, too?”

  He grimaced. “No, but let’s just say she also sticks her nose in where it doesn’t belong way too much for my liking.”

  “So it was your serial killer case that ruined her wedding day?”

  “This interview is about you, not me.”

  Chapter 24

  After finishing up my interview/interrogation with Detective Johnson and handing over Scott’s tablet (which the detective was none too impressed that I’d kept), I was finally free to go. Ryder was waiting for me in his car. As soon as I got to the parking lot, a black Porsche pulled into the lot, and Blake and Lizzie both jumped out of it. Oh, boy. I was so not in the mood to regurgitate this story again.

  Blake demanded, “Why didn’t you call us when you found Mandi O’Malley?”

  Ryder got out of his car as well and came over to stand next to me. “It’s not our job to inform you of police matters.”

  Blake drew himself up to his full height and crossed his arms. “I thought we were working together.”

  Ryder did the same. “Don’t forget you’re part of the media, pal. We called in an unattended death. It wasn’t something we needed to run by you.”

  “I’m talking about common courtesy—”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “To your corners, boys. This isn’t about who’s got more testosterone.”

  I snickered in spite of the tense situation. She’d voiced exactly what I was thinking.

  Backing down, Blake said in a calmer voice, “Will you at least tell us if it’s true that you got a message from Mandi O’Malley saying she killed her husband?”

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked.

  Lizzie said, “You know those contacts I told you he has? Well, one of them is in the LPD.”

  Ryder and I shared a glance. This guy.

  I said, “Are you asking on or off the record?”

  “Off,” Blake replied.

  “Off the record, yes.”

  Lizzie’s brow furrowed. “Who locks someone in a cellar to warn them away from investigating one day, then turns around the next day and sends an engraved invitation to return to said cellar to find her dead body? It makes no sense.”

  Blake said, “I think it does. After the initial rush of killing her husband wears off, she finally starts feeling bad about it. She can’t stomach the thought of sitting next to his mother and planning his funeral, so she disappears. She goes out to the cabin for some quiet time to think, only to be found by you, Juliet, one of her least favorite people. You’re clearly poking around again, getting closer by the second to figuring out what she’s done. She tries to threaten you by locking you in the cellar and slashing your tires, but deep down she knows you’ll never give up. Then, at some point—maybe in the dead of night when she can’t free herself from her nightmares—she snaps and decides to kill herself. She picks the one person who it won’t traumatize to find her dead to come out and deal with the aftermath. I think it’s more than plausible.”

  Ryder said, “I think it sounds like the plot of a TV crime drama.”

  He shrugged. “Life imitates art. So now that we’re sharing, I’ve been speaking with our favorite drug thief, Chandra Thomas. She swears up and down it wasn’t her stealing the drugs this time.”

  I said, “And you believe her because…”

  He showed me his phone. “Because she took a video of Mandi stealing meds out of her bag so she wouldn’t get accused of the crime.”

  Sure enough, the video showed Mandi, looking like she was
trying to be sneaky, entering a cubicle with a nameplate reading CHANDRA THOMAS. She bent down and rifled through a duffel bag under the desk, coming up with four boxes of samples. Then she disappeared off screen.

  I said, “That’s great, but we no longer think the drug theft has much to do with the murders.”

  “Murders, plural? I was under the impression that the one today was a suicide.”

  Damn it. I probably wasn’t supposed to say that.

  Lizzie said, “If Mandi’s death was a murder instead of a suicide, then the drugs could have everything to do with it, especially if she and her boyfriend were the ones doing the stealing. Let’s not forget Jared disappeared this morning. He—and his wife—could have killed her on their way out of town.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “This is giving me a headache. I’m tired and hungry. I need to eat lunch and step back for a while.”

  Lizzie gave me a sympathetic smile. “I’m right there with you, sister.”

  Blake turned to her. “What do you mean? You already had lunch. Did you forget again?”

  She frowned at her husband. “You want to carry this baby for a while and see how tired and hungry and forgetful it makes you?”

  He looked like a deer in headlights. “No, dear. We’ll stop somewhere on the way back to work and get you a second lunch.”

  Ryder said, “We’ll be wrapping things up here soon, so if we don’t see you again, thanks for the help.”

  “Yes, thank you. We really appreciate it,” I said.

  Blake shrugged. “All in a day’s work. But I can tell you it was nice not to have to run point on a murder around here.” He put his arm around Lizzie. “I think we’re getting too old for it.”

  I was pretty sure Ryder and I were older than both of them, but whatever. I figured he was more referencing the fact that parenthood would take up most of their time and energy for the foreseeable future. I had to admit that domesticity (minus the baby, of course) and giving up the pro bono murder investigating would be a big improvement over my current life situation.

  —

  Ryder took me to one of my favorite places, Cantina del Sol, but once we got there, I didn’t feel much like eating. What I really wanted to do was call Pete, if only to hear his voice and let him reassure me that everything was going to work out. The problem was, I didn’t want to tell him any of what happened since I last talked to him, because he’d only worry. Figuring I’d inadvertently blurt something out like I had with Blake and Lizzie, I thought it best to not call or even text him.