Dying for a Drive: A Senoia Cozy Mystery

by Susan Harper

  “I’m wearing heels and a two hundred-dollar dress I bought to go to weddings and other formal events,” Felicity said. “No, I am not climbing in.”

  “So I do the dirty work for you, then?” he griped as he began sorting through bags of trash. “I’ve got on fifty-dollar dress shoes. If they’re ruined from this, you’re buying me a new pair.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  He tossed a few bags out to her so she could dig as well. Fifteen minutes into digging through the trash, Jefferson popped his head up. “Felicity, I found something.”

  “What?” she asked.

  He tossed out a button-up shirt, its sleeves covered in what appeared to be oil. “Who throws away a brand new shirt in a dumpster behind a pub? It wasn’t in a bag, it was just tossed in here.”

  Felicity held the man’s button-up in her hands. “A small. No way, Bobby wears at least a large if not extra large. If this is motor oil on this shirt, this might be enough to get Jack to release Bobby.”

  Jefferson climbed up and out of the dumpster; he proceeded to toss the scattered bags back into it to clean up the back alleyway. He made a face as the smells passed back through his nostrils and took a sniff of his own clothes before shuddering in disgust. He looked back at Felicity, who was eyeing the dress shirt with a careful eye. “What are you going to do now?” Jefferson asked as he wiped his hands off on his dress pants. Groaning at the sight of the stains that now populated his black slacks, he sighed at the realization he would be taking a trip to the dry cleaners soon.

  “I’m going to take this up to the police station right now,” Felicity said as she gripped the shirt in her hands.

  Jefferson nodded. “Looks like I’m going with you then, especially in case Jack is still there. I don’t like the way he talks to you.”

  Felicity smiled slightly. “Thanks, Jeffrey.”

  The two of them headed straight to the station; it didn’t take long to locate Jack at his desk. He was busying himself with paperwork over Bobby’s arrest. Felicity marched right up to him, ignoring the receptionist, and slapped the dirty button-up on his desk. He glared up at her. “What’s this?” he asked. Jefferson remained at a safe distance behind, eyeing Jack from over Felicity’s shoulder. Jack sniffed the air, and his face curled up in disgust; he looked down at the shirt and then back up at Felicity. “Dang, this stinks. Where did you find this?”

  “It was found out in the dumpster behind the office complex where Bobby works. There is no way this shirt fits Bobby. My guess is that whoever killed Charles got the oil on his sleeves and ditched the shirt during the car show.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t go looking for this after I left?” he groaned, leaning back in his chair with his hands on his temples. He began massaging them roughly as he prepared for the answer he knew was coming.

  “Of course I did. I’m not letting you throw Bobby in jail on some hunch.”

  “So you sent your boyfriend dumpster-diving and came up with this shirt that’s as much, if not twice, as circumstantial as what I’ve got,” he said, working through the paperwork. Jefferson started toward him, but Felicity put a hand on his chest.

  “Look at it, Jack. Trust me for two whole seconds and consider that maybe you’re wrong.”

  Jack lowered the pen he had been scribbling with and placed it on his desk. He looked at Felicity with a rather quizzical glance. “Even if it’s the same motor oil, I can’t match it to a specific car, you know? Besides, I thought I told you to leave this alone.”

  “Jack, Bobby is innocent, and you know it,” Felicity said with a stern expression. She gripped the shirt by its collar and gave it a rough shake. “This shirt may help to prove that. Finding oil in his office is completely circumstantial,” she said and leaned forward, propping her hands on his desk and staring him down as she spoke.

  Jack stood up slowly, doing his best not to shoot Jefferson a dirty look. He looked at Felicity and swiped up the shirt. “I’m going to send this into evidence. I’ll be sure to test the stain on the shirt, but that’s not going to clear Bobby. The arrest has been made, and he’s probably going to have to go to court. I’m sure the judge will grant him bail because you’re right, it’s just circumstantial evidence that we got on him right now. But for the time being, Felicity, Bobby is our prime suspect. This is the last time I’m going to tell you, though, leave it alone. You’re just a party planner. Stop playing detective before you get yourself into trouble. I’ll look into this, okay? Don’t worry about Bobby. He’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Jack left her standing by his desk. Felicity sighed, feeling sorry for Bobby because he would likely be spending the weekend in jail until a judge could make a ruling on bail. The big guy certainly passed for a rough customer, but Bobby Hendricks was not a fighter. Lucky for him, being in the Senoia prison just meant being alone and maybe a little cold. Still, she felt somewhat assured that Jack would stay true to his promise to look further into the oil-stained shirt. She and Jefferson left the station, both feeling rather sick about the situation…or maybe it was the stench coming from Jefferson’s clothes.

  Chapter 8

  Felicity Overton was on a mission. Bobby had spent the last two days in jail because he had been arrested over the weekend, so thus far no bail had been set. Jack was letting her speak to him, but only sparingly and always with supervision. She was trying to keep his spirits up, but Bobby was a good guy being accused of murder and it weighed on him heavily. She wanted to clear his name, and she was determined to do so no matter what it took. Evidently the dress shirt was not good enough to get him released, and Bobby was having a hard time contacting his lawyer to help him out. Apparently, the man had gone on a fishing trip with his brother a few days ago, and it’d be another few days before he got back. It was Monday morning, so most of the shops were already opening. She stayed around to help Jefferson open up their storefront, but once it was open, she no longer could force herself to stay put.

  “What are you going to do?” Jefferson asked as she paced back and forth in the shop, talking to herself a bit about the ordeal.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I know that there is no way Bobby did this. Bobby’s a good guy, and he doesn’t even have a motive for killing Charles. Autumn said a short guy probably took Charles out, and Bobby is really tall. Also, the shirt we found wouldn’t have fit Bobby. Other than the fact that oil was found on Bobby’s desk, they don’t really have a case against him at all. It’s just wasting everyone’s time and probably scaring Bobby half to death.”

  “The oil could’ve come from anywhere at the car show,” Jefferson said. “If Jack had any sense, he’d know that. If Bobby had looked under the hood of even one car during the car show, he could have gotten oil on him and brought it back to the office.”

  “Bobby did say he went by the office for a few minutes to pick up some paperwork; they closed down for the car show, so no one other than Bobby should have been there,” Felicity said. “Maybe I should go talk to some of the others who work there. Maybe Kirk or Ryan or one of the other employees could help give me an idea of who else has access to the office.”

  “Go for it,” Jefferson said. “I can watch the shop.”

  “Thanks, Jeffrey,” she said and headed out the door and across the street. She took the elevator up to the second floor, feeling incredibly uncomfortable being in the elevator at all. She could still picture Charles lying there lifeless on the floor. Even though Jefferson had flipped him over, it was she who had identified him for the beat cop that’d arrived on the scene. Now as the elevator ambled up the floors to Bobby’s office, she wondered how long he’d been there or if he’d even been alive long enough to know his body was being dumped for display. She shivered slightly, and was thankful when the elevator doors opened and she was able to get out.

  Felicity walked into the insurance office and she saw what looked like an AA meeting going on with the way the group was set up. Four men and one woman had pulled up chairs in the middle
of the lobby-like room, and they seemed to be having a serious conversation.

  “They can’t just lock Bobby up like that, can they?” the girl asked, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.

  “Are they going to arrest us too? Are we accomplices?” one of the younger men asked.

  The whispers and questions went on like that for minutes as they worked themselves up and calmed themselves down over and over again. Felicity leaned against the doorframe, absorbing it all before finally deciding she needed real answers. They all looked up when Felicity entered; she recognized two of the men as Kirk and Ryan, the two head agents that Felicity had met shortly after the murder who worked for Bobby. Ryan stood. “Felicity Overton?” he asked. “Can I help you?”

  “Everything okay in here?” she asked, for all of them wore sad expressions.

  “We were just talking about Bobby,” Kirk said, still seated. “We’re dividing up his workload until he gets out of jail.” He made a gesture, and the others scurried back to Bobby’s desk to pick up their share of the work.

  Felicity frowned. “I’m sorry. Is now a bad time?”

  “No, you’re fine,” Ryan said. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “Honestly, I’m trying to help clear Bobby’s name,” she said. “I was just hoping to ask some questions about the agency?”

  “I guess that’s okay,” Ryan said, but he looked down at his watch.

  “Go do what you need to do,” Kirk said as he stood. He made a gesture in Ryan’s direction as he wheeled around to face Felicity, “He’s got a meeting with a client down the street.”

  “Yes, that’s fine. I don’t want to be a bother,” Felicity said.

  “Help her out, would you, Kirk?” Ryan said before heading out the door.

  She took a moment to meet the rest of the employees. They may not have had much to say, but they were still pieces to the puzzle and every bit of information helped bring Bobby closer to freedom. Susan was their receptionist, and Linda and Donald were two other agents who worked under Ryan and Kirk. They all wandered back to their offices, and Susan ambled back to her desk in the lobby area while she stood with Kirk where the circle of chairs had once been. “Look,” Kirk said under his breath, “I don’t know what it is you’re trying to do here, but you better not be snooping around for your little cop buddy.”

  “Jack is not a friend,” Felicity assured him. “And right now I’m trying everything I can to prove him wrong. I want to make sure I get Bobby out of jail. I don’t want him to have to go to court.”

  “Me either,” Kirk said, but he was still eyeing Felicity with a suspicious glare.

  “Bobby’s my friend,” she said to reassure him. “I want to help. Do you think you could tell me who all has access to the office after hours?”

  “Me, Bobby, and Ryan,” Kirk said. “Don, Linda, and Susan all have to wait on us to get in. Bobby doesn’t like handing out keys.”

  “How long have you all worked for Bobby?” Felicity asked and began jotting down notes in the notebook she had been carrying around ever since the murder.

  “Ryan has been here since the place opened…so has Evan. I just joined about six months ago, but I have experience so I came on as a head agent. Linda has been here about a year, and I think Don’s been around a little longer than her.”

  “Do you recall seeing anyone speaking with Charles Jones the day of the car show?” Felicity asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t here. Most of us weren’t because the office was closed. We all took the day off. I know Bobby was here at some point, though, because he called me asking if I left the doors unlocked, but I didn’t. I had been in charge of closing up the day before the car show, so he assumed I had just forgotten, and he was a little annoyed at me. But I always lock up,” Kirk explained.

  “So do you think someone else could have gotten in? You don’t think that Ryan—”

  “Ryan was in Atlanta that weekend,” Kirk said. “He’s a good guy, but I guess I’m a little paranoid, so I looked at his social media pages. Ryan posted pictures of him and his kids hanging out at Six Flags that day, so he couldn’t have been the one to get into the office during the car show because he was in Atlanta.”

  “Could a client have gotten a key somehow?” Felicity asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Kirk said. “But, I suppose, if someone really wanted to, they could have snagged it off one of our desks and made a copy. Clients are in and out of here all the time, but I can’t imagine why someone would want to get into our office for any reason. It’s just an insurance agency, you know?”

  “Do you think you could get me a list of clients?” she asked.

  He frowned. “I don’t know about that. It is kind of a breach of privacy. Bobby would probably be annoyed if I—”

  “Bobby would probably be relieved,” she interrupted. “Especially if I found something that got him out of jail. Please, Kirk?”

  There was a good bit of hesitation before he waved her over to Evan’s desk. “Evan, get me a printout of all of our current clients. I know that will take a bit, but just go ahead and do it. Give it to Felicity before she leaves, all right?”

  “Sure thing,” Evan said and began typing away on his computer as Kirk headed to his office.

  Felicity had to wait around for a while, but eventually Evan handed her a stack of papers. “I had to remove all of their personal information and information on their policies,” Evan said. “So it’s just a list of names.”

  “Thanks, Evan,” she said with a smile.

  “Just, um… Just get him out of there, alright?” he replied shakily. Felicity gripped the papers a little tighter and gave Evan a quick nod. She was definitely going to do that. She poked her head into Kirk’s office and thanked him before leaving. She headed down the elevator and back across the street to her store where Jefferson was just bidding farewell to a couple of window shoppers.

  “Whatcha got there, Felicity?” he asked, holding the door open for her and pointing toward the stack of papers.

  “Homework,” she said and headed to the counter where they divided the stacks into two.

  “Joy,” he said.

  “We need to go through all of these names and see if we can find anything that would connect these people to Charles,” Felicity said.

  “Great,” Jefferson said with very little enthusiasm. He opened up the internet on the computer so that he could do a little bit of online stalking. He took a stack of the papers and frowned at the thickness of it. “You should probably order dinner.” He flipped the papers, counting them as he went. “Yeah, we’re definitely ordering dinner.”

  They got to work, and for the next few hours, Felicity worked on her phone while Jefferson plugged in names from his list onto the work computer. For the longest time, nothing stood out to them as they did a little bit of online stalking for each person on the list. Every person came back boring and mundane, and they’d already been at this for hours. Several empty containers of Chinese food littered the work desk as Jefferson declared yet another name on the list as being useless. Felicity was starting to feel like they were wasting their time when Jefferson snorted slightly as he picked up another piece of paper with a set of names. “What?” she asked.

  “I think I found something,” he said. “And I didn’t even need to look it up online.”

  “Oh?”

  “Here, take a look at the first name on this page,” he said and handed her the new page he had just grabbed out of the pile.

  “Monica Barns,” Felicity said, her eyebrow raised.

  Jefferson nodded. “Yup. Miss Former-Captain-of-the-Cheer-Squad just became a prime suspect.”

  Felicity clasped her hands together excitedly. “Well, it looks like I know what I’m going to do next. I think I’m going to talk to Monica and Jesse about their little catfishing incident.”

  Jefferson agreed. “Good move, detective.”

  Chapter 9

  Felicity hurried down the
sidewalk toward Senoia Coffee on the corner. Some movie actor was seated outside at one of the tables, and a group of girls were all taking pictures with the gentleman in the sunglasses and ball cap. She chuckled slightly at how her quaint little town had suddenly become such a televised sensation in the past few years due to the Georgia Film Company taking over. There was no time for her to pause to see which star had been recognized and was currently being harassed by tourists; she was already late for her meeting.

  She zipped inside and immediately spotted the two familiar faces seated in the window, both gawking at the Hollywood type seated just outside. Clearly, their choice to sit by the window had been with intention. “Monica, Jesse,” Felicity said as she slipped into the empty chair across from the two of them.

  “I can’t tell who it is,” Jesse said, completely ignoring Felicity’s presence. “Is he one of the guys from the zombie show?”

  “You know they’re down there filming today,” Monica responded, shoving Jesse off of her because the woman was practically crawling into her lap to look out the window. Jesse shot back a look of contempt as she plopped back into her own seat and craned her neck for a better view.

  Felicity sighed. She had managed to message Monica online to ask her to meet up for coffee, and she had immediately gotten back to her letting her know that she and Jesse were right down the street at Senoia Coffee already. It had been rather convenient for Felicity, but she had felt rushed, worried she wouldn’t get another opportunity to speak to Monica at all. It was no secret around town that both girls were more than a little full of themselves. If left to their own devices, the two high society wannabes would most likely have floated a lunch invitation around for weeks on end. Felicity wouldn’t exactly say they were enemies, but she had never considered them close friends either, and she was just the kind of small town “nobody” that they liked to ignore for appearance’s sake.