Cozy Creek

by K M Morgan

  Crumple spoke with Tim Jorgenson, the tall, bald, gangly, square-jawed fifty-four-year-old medical examiner, while Daisy’s eyes scanned the house. The place itself was in rough shape, both in terms of décor and condition. Even though this was a crime scene, as an interior decorator, Daisy couldn’t help but be struck by how tacky the floral-print wallpaper was in the living room. She could have gone on further, but it was infinitely more important for her to focus on the other mess at hand.

  The house was in a complete state of disarray. It looked like a tornado had swept through the living room. Furniture was overturned, papers were strewn about, books were on the floor, and the side window was half-open. On the surface, this had all the makings of a burglary gone wrong.

  Daisy then spotted a fifty-inch argument against that theory. Big-ticket items were always the most appetizing for thieves. Things like jewelry and electronics. So to see Adam’s fifty-inch flat-screen television sitting completely untouched in the corner of the room was very peculiar. That was before Daisy took into account the argument that she had witnessed at Chow’s restaurant the previous evening.

  Daisy gave the room one last look before approaching Crumple.

  “Any updates?” Daisy asked.

  Crumpled sighed. “Unfortunately, nothing has changed since the last time I was here.”

  “Whoever killed Adam sure went to a lot of trouble to make this look like it was a burglary gone wrong.”

  The detective nodded. “So much so that when I first arrived on the scene, that’s exactly what I thought had happened.”

  “What gave it away? The fact that big screen TV hadn’t been taken?”

  Crumple nodded. “Yeah. That was a dead giveaway.”

  “Dead?”

  “Sorry. That was a poor choice of words.”

  “You don’t need to apologize to me. The only person who should be sorry right now is the killer.” Resolve came to Daisy’s face. “And by the time we get done with them, they will be.”

  The detective saw great intensity in Daisy’s eyes.

  “I’m so glad you’re on my side,” Crumple said.

  Daisy’s mind was focused squarely on the case. “Did the killer leave any fingerprints behind?”

  Detective Crumple shook his head. “The forensics team wasn’t able to pull any foreign prints.”

  Daisy bit the corner of her lip. “Not even from the murder weapon?”

  Crumple sighed. “Unfortunately, my team hasn’t been able to recover the murder weapon.”

  Daisy’s nose wrinkled. “Really?”

  Crumple nodded.

  “Do you at least know Adam’s cause of death?”

  “There’s no about that. He was stabbed in the back.”

  Daisy winced.

  “Yeah. It isn’t the least painful way to die,” Crumple said.

  Daisy scratched her head. “It’s also very curious.”

  The detective had a different take. “Try frustrating. There isn’t a more readily-available weapon in the world than a knife. Besides, even if we do recover the murder weapon, the killer will most likely have wiped it clean of prints.”

  Daisy couldn’t disagree with that. “True, but we do have something to go on.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There are a lot of ways to kill a man, so to have chosen a knife and stabbed Adam in the back could be quite significant.”

  “You think that the killer chose to stab Adam in the back as a symbolic gesture?”

  Daisy’s forehead wrinkled. “Maybe. I mean, the killer could have stabbed Adam in the heart instead.”

  “They could have,” Crumple said. He threw out another possibility. “This could also all just be a big coincidence. After all, it is much easier to sneak up behind someone to kill them.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” Daisy kept digging. “Did your team end up finding anything useful in all of this mess?”

  “Not a thing.” Crumple let out another sigh. “Whoever is the culprit, they seem to have done a good job covering up their tracks.”

  “So let me get this straight. All you really know is that Adam was stabbed in the back between seven and eight o’clock last night, but you have no prints, no murder weapon, and no other evidence?”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds pretty bleak.”

  It didn’t just sound that way; it was also the truth. Still, all hope was not lost.

  “At least we have some leads,” Daisy said.

  Chapter Seven

  Daisy and Crumple knew exactly whom they wanted to speak to next. A conversation with Adam’s wife was in order. Crumple had already spoken with Leah Mitchell earlier, but that was before receiving news about the argument that had occurred at Chow’s restaurant the night before.

  With the forensics team still investigating the scene of the crime, Leah had driven over to her son’s split-level ranch-style house on Brush Drive until she got the go-ahead to head back home. When Daisy and Crumple arrived at Gary Mitchell’s place, Leah was looking somber, as expected.

  Whether that was just an act was debatable. Although, knowing that Leah had left Chow’s last night in a huff made it more difficult for Daisy to believe without reservations that Leah was simply a grieving widow. There was a cloud of suspicion hanging over her suddenly that would only dissipate if Leah was able to provide conclusive answers to Daisy’s questions.

  But first, Leah had a number of pressing questions for Crumple.

  “Have you figured out who killed my husband?” Leah asked.

  Detective Crumple grimaced. “I’m afraid not.”

  Leah narrowed her eyes. “Don’t stop until you do.”

  “We won’t,” Crumple replied.

  “Am I able to go back home now?” Leah asked.

  The detective shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “It will be a few more hours.”

  Leah’s son, Gary Mitchell, spoke up.

  “I’m confused. If you have no updates for us, then why are you here?” Gary asked.

  Gary looked like a carbon copy of his father. He had perfectly-combed short brown hair, a clean-shaven angular face, and a tall, muscular body. The only difference between him and Adam, other than the fact that Gary was twenty-five years old, was that instead of charisma, Gary operated with a smug sense of entitlement.

  Gary was the one who asked the question, but instead of replying to him, Detective Crumple focused on Leah.

  “I need to ask you a few more questions,” Crumple said.

  Leah looked uncomfortable as she replied, “Okay.”

  Crumple nudged his head towards the front lawn. “Alone.”

  Gary became very protective of his mother. “Why?”

  The detective wasn’t terribly descriptive with the details. “It’s official police business.”

  Gary stared the detective down. “Why are you being so secretive?”

  Crumple didn’t back down. “You’ll find out soon enough when we come back inside to talk to you.”

  That shut Gary up in a hurry. His eyes widened as he looked like he was about to start sweating.

  With things getting a little hot under the collar for Gary, the detective turned his focus back to Leah. “Now, Mrs. Mitchell, can you please step outside?”

  ***

  When Leah joined Daisy and Detective Crumple outside, her mood soured. Leah took a confrontational tone as she addressed the detective.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Leah asked.

  “Like I already told you, I need to ask you some questions,” Crumple said.

  Leah put her hands on her hips. “I already answered your questions.”

  He corrected her. “No. What you did was lie to me.”

  Outrage came to Leah’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  The detective went right after her. “You told me you were at the restaurant until eight last night, but Ms. McDare here spotted you storming out of Chow’s around seven o
’clock.”

  Leah stared Daisy down, her disdain all too clear. Adam’s wife clearly didn’t know a thing about Daisy. Otherwise, she would realize that Daisy could not be intimidated. Daisy stared right back at Leah without flinching.

  That only made Leah angrier. She directed her ire at the detective. “What makes you so sure that she’s telling the truth?”

  Crumple’s rationale was simple. “Because she has no reason to lie.”

  Daisy picked up right where the detective had left off. “The same cannot be said of you, Leah. Especially after that argument I saw you having with Hailey Bennett.”

  Leah opened her mouth to answer, no doubt to try to deflect, but Crumple made sure he got the next word in.

  “What were you arguing about at the restaurant?” Detective Crumple asked.

  Leah began to squirm before taking a deep breath and coming clean. “Hailey has been harassing my family ever since Adam publicly admitted to having an affair with her. So when she spotted me at the restaurant last night, she decided to take her frustrations out on me.”

  Leah’s explanation was a start, but there were definitely some holes in her story. Crumple tried to get her to fill in some of the missing details.

  “What did she say to you?” Crumple asked.

  “That my family ruined her life,” Leah replied.

  “How did you respond?”

  “I told her that she had a lot of nerve berating me considering that she was the one who’d had an affair with my husband. Not only did I not do anything to her, but I was the victim in this situation.”

  “Did you say anything else?”

  Leah nodded. “I also told her that if anyone was to blame for ruining her life, it was her.”

  “I imagine she did not take that well,” Detective Crumple said.

  Leah shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I told her to go away. Thankfully, she did.”

  Leah had done a good job of painting Hailey in an antagonistic light, but was Leah truly just a victim like she had claimed to be, or was the situation murkier than she had described?

  Daisy tried to egg Leah on. “Then you left the restaurant in a rage.”

  Leah tried to downplay what Daisy had seen the night before.

  “You’re exaggerating,” Leah said.

  Daisy shook her head. “That’s what you want us to believe. But the fact is, you left the restaurant shortly before the murder occurred, looking completely bent out of shape.”

  Leah shot Daisy a glare. “Are you accusing me of killing my husband?”

  “No. I’m just saying that things don’t look good for you. After all, you have no verifiable alibi for the time of the murder,” Daisy replied.

  “Like I already told the detective, when I returned home last night, the house had been completely trashed. It seemed pretty obvious that we had been burglarized,” Leah said.

  “We have reason to believe that the house was staged to look like it had been burglarized as a way for the killer to cover their tracks,” Daisy replied.

  Leah’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Daisy corrected her. “You say that, but I have seen killers do it before.”

  Leah refused to believe Daisy. “No. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Daisy fired right back at her. “I’ll tell you what doesn’t make sense. I saw you storm out of the restaurant at seven, but Crumple tells me that you didn’t place a call to 9-1-1 about finding your husband’s body until after eight. Your house is less than ten minutes away from Chow’s. Which begs the question, where were you during those other fifty minutes?”

  “I wasn’t killing my husband if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I wasn’t implying anything. I was just asking you a question—which you still haven’t answered.”

  Leah saw both Daisy and Detective Crumple staring her down. Instead of arguing more, Leah opted to give a straight answer.

  “I took a drive,” she said.

  “Where?” Crumple asked.

  “To the water.”

  “For how long?”

  “Long enough to calm myself down.”

  “So that’s it? You just drove to the water for an hour then returned home?” Crumple asked.

  “Is that so hard to believe?” Leah asked.

  “Yes, it is, especially since you told me a completely different story this morning,” Crumple said.

  “I’m telling you the truth now,” Leah replied.

  “That’s a lot harder to believe, considering you already lied to me once,” Crumple said.

  Leah tried pleading with the detective. “You have to believe me.”

  “No, we don’t. Not unless you have someone who can verify your story. Do you have anyone who can do that?” Daisy asked.

  Leah averted her eyes as she answered. “I was alone. But I’m telling you the truth.”

  “You keep saying that, but it doesn’t mean anything to us unless you can back it up, which you can’t.

  “I don’t know why you’re coming after me. Why don’t you talk to Hailey Bennett? She was far angrier than I was last night.”

  It almost never failed. If a suspect was questioned long enough, they nearly always ended up pointing the finger of blame elsewhere. While Daisy used to view that tactic as an unwelcome distraction, she now realized how useful it could be. A number of good leads had come from suspects throwing each other under the bus. Would that be true this time as well?

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get to her,” Detective Crumple said.

  Leah had a different suggestion. “Why don’t you go do that now?”

  Crumple held his ground. “We’re not done with you yet.”

  Leah shrugged her shoulders. “What else do you want from me?”

  “To start, I would like to know if the affair was over between Hailey and your husband.”

  “Yes. It ended ten years ago.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Crumple asked.

  “There is no doubt in my mind. Now is that all?”

  The detective’s fuse was getting shorter. “I’ll tell you when we’re through.” He moved on to a new question. “How did you feel about your husband coming clean to the public about his affair with Hailey?”

  Leah gave a very noncommittal answer. “That was his decision.”

  Crumple groaned as his frustration mounted. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “The affair was a long time ago.”

  Leah had managed to find another way not to give the detective the information he was looking for. That didn’t sit well with Crumple. He tried to come at his question from a new angle.

  “Even so, no one likes having dirty laundry dredged up,” the detective replied.

  Leah was dismissive. “I had gotten over what Adam had done to me.”

  “What about your son? How did he feel when his father publicly admitted to having cheated on you?” Crumple asked.

  “That was old news to Gary as well.”

  “Until that news found new life a month ago.”

  Leah became very defensive. “Leave my son out of this.”

  Crumple stared her down. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Mitchell? Did I strike a nerve?”

  Leah backed off. “No. It’s just that I don’t see why you need to bring up my son.”

  “It’s admirable that you are defending Gary, but let me tell you something. You already have your hands full trying to defend yourself,” Detective Crumple said.

  “For the last time, I didn’t do anything,” Leah replied.

  Daisy ignored Leah’s plea and soldiered on. “Mrs. Mitchell, your husband came into Sweet Tooth Bakery yesterday afternoon to buy a cupcake for you, but he didn’t look like he was doing it to be sweet. Did you and your husband have an argument yesterday?”

  Leah was curt with her reply. “No.”

  “If you two didn’t argue, then what was he so disturbed abou
t?”

  “He was just really stressed out about the election.”

  Leah seemed to be downplaying things again.

  Daisy tried to determine if she was hiding something. “So everything was fine between you two?”

  “Yes.”

  Leah’s mouth said one thing, but the distressed look on her face said another.

  Crumple stepped in again. “If I find out that you’ve been lying to me again, I will not look kindly on that.”

  “You can ask me a hundred more questions if you want. It’s not going to change the fact that I didn’t kill my husband,” Leah snapped.

  Crumple stared her down, but she didn’t waver at all.

  “All right. We’re done—for now,” Crumple said.

  Leah sighed. “Good.”

  Her relief was short-lived as Crumple finished his thought.

  “It’s time to see what your son has to say,” Crumple replied.

  Chapter Eight

  Daisy and Crumple warned Leah not to interfere with the questioning of her son. Whether she would heed that warning was yet to be determined. For the moment, Leah stood uncomfortably on her son’s front lawn, running her hands through her hair in a nervous fashion.

  When Daisy and Crumple went back inside the house, Gary was more worked up than ever. He opened his mouth to try to defend his mother, but he was soon stopped dead in his tracks by Crumple. As the detective revealed that Gary was the next person to be questioned, it stunned Gary. A few moments later, the initial shock had worn off and had given way to animosity.

  It was hardly the best way to start an interview, but the sleuths had no choice. Adding to the discomfort of the situation was the pungent smell that had invaded Daisy’s nostrils. Standing in Gary’s sparsely decorated bachelor-pad-style living room, Daisy couldn’t help but be distracted by how strong Gary’s cologne was. It was almost as if he had poured the entire bottle on by mistake. Whatever had occurred, to have such a strong scent wafting around in a confined space made for an overwhelming odor.

  That said, being around Gary was an exercise in extremes, not just in terms of smell, but emotions as well. The twenty-five-year-old wanted no part in anything that the investigators had to say. He could not show them the door fast enough, which made for an awkward tension, as Daisy and Crumple weren’t about to budge.