Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  “What did Trevor have to say?” I asked.

  Detective Stone’s findings were inconclusive. “He gave me an alibi. The problem is, there’s no way to conclusively confirm or refute it.”

  “That’s discouraging.” I took a deep breath. “How about Kristen Cramer? You can’t really talk about the Trevor Skelton case without bringing her up.”

  “So true.”

  Kristen represented the flip side of the Trevor Skelton case. She used to be Trevor’s mistress. When news of their affair broke, her life was thrown into chaos as well. She ended up losing just as much as Trevor in the process. Kristen’s husband left her. Then, in the subsequent divorce proceedings, she was forced to sell her thriving pie shop. That was a real blow, not just because of the financial implications, but because she baked the best pie in three counties. She had the blue ribbons to prove it.

  In an instant, it was all gone. Everything she worked so hard for went up in smoke. In the thick of middle age, she had to start over from scratch. Unlike Trevor Skelton, Kristen had been working tirelessly to claw her way back, but it could take her years of blood, sweat, and tears to make any progress. Even then, there was no guarantee that she’d ever reach the same heights again. If Trevor had a motive for murder, the same could be said for Kristen.

  “So, what did she have to say for herself?” I asked.

  “Like Trevor, she said she had an alibi, but there’s no way to confirm it.”

  “Of course not. That would be too easy.”

  The detective agreed. “Everyone has a story, including Billy Conklin.”

  Conklin was the subject of Jake’s most recent case, which centered on suspicions that Billy had been an unfaithful husband. On behalf of Jake’s client, Hillary Conklin, Jake was able to procure evidence of Billy’s infidelity. As expected, upon finding out the news, Hillary had divorce papers served. The wounds were still very fresh in Billy’s mind with this one. Billy was wrestling with a lot of anger. Had his rage boiled over?

  “What’s Billy’s story?” I said.

  “It’s going to sound like a broken record, but he has an alibi that can’t be confirmed either,” Detective Stone replied.

  The bad news kept compounding, but I didn’t let that get me down. It was a challenge, but I was ready to take it head on. “Let’s see if we can change that.”

  The detective was not quite as optimistic. “We have our work cut out for us.”

  I expected to hear a few more names come out of his mouth, so when they didn’t, it troubled me.

  Before he had a chance to take the conversation in a new direction, I stopped him.

  “Wait a minute. That’s it?” I asked.

  The detective’s forehead wrinkled. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You mean, you haven’t questioned anyone else?”

  He became defensive. “No.”

  “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  He gave me a stern face. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

  He clearly wasn’t, which only made me more upset.

  The detective explained his thought process. “Those are the three most likely suspects.”

  I set him straight. “Those are three suspects, yes, but what about Jake’s ex-girlfriend? Or his receptionist, for that matter?”

  He looked back at me with a blank face. “What about them?”

  I fired back at him. “Why didn’t you question them?”

  “Because they didn’t seem to have motives.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. It took all the restraint I had to keep from snapping at him. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  Detective Stone thought I was overreacting. “From what I heard, Jake and his ex-girlfriend broke up two years ago.”

  “They did. That’s the problem.”

  The detective still didn’t seem to be getting my point.

  “What is?”

  I wanted to leave nothing in doubt. “To this day, she still isn’t over him. The woman is practically obsessed with Jake. After all this time, not only was she still hung up on him, but she talked like she was going to win him back someday.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she’s said as much to my face.”

  “I didn’t realize how obsessive she was. You’re right—that does sound like a recipe for trouble.”

  “Exactly. Never underestimate the power of crazy. Especially when it comes to Carole Dunning,” I said.

  “In that case, we’ll be paying her a visit,” the detective replied.

  My stomach turned at the mere thought of having to talk to Carole again. Just because I knew it was necessary to interrogate her didn’t mean I had to like it. It was safe to say there was no love lost between us. When I thought back on the most unpleasant conversations in my life, she was involved in most of them. While I tried to keep from getting queasy, Detective Stone moved on to Jake’s receptionist, Diane Stanton.

  “Now, about this receptionist. She just seemed like a quiet woman who happened to work for him.”

  “You know what they say about the quiet ones.”

  Detective Stone nodded. “That sometimes they are the most dangerous.”

  “Exactly. Don’t let her mousey demeanor fool you. She may have looked like a librarian, but inside, she was an emotional powder keg waiting to explode.”

  The detective seemed to be at a loss as to how I knew that. “Did Jake and Diane have some sort of work disagreement that I don’t know about?”

  I corrected him. “No. It’s more that she’s had a secret crush on Jake since the day I first met her.”

  “The crush couldn’t have been much of a secret if you knew about it.”

  “True, but it was secret enough that you didn’t know about it.”

  The detective pursed his lips. “Fair enough.”

  “Diane tried to hide her feelings for Jake, but I could tell how she felt. She always looked at me with envy. I knew it burned her that I got to be with him instead of her.”

  The detective digested all the new information I had just thrown his way. It was a lot to catch up on. I waited impatiently for his reply. Finally, it came.

  “It sounds like we have some new suspects to question,” he said.

  “Yeah, and we’d better get right to it. We’re a number of days behind already. It’s time to play catch-up,” I replied.

  Chapter Ten

  My instinct was to hit up Jake’s ex-girlfriend’s place first. There were two reasons for this. The first was because Detective Stone had made the befuddling decision of neglecting to interview her during his first round of questioning. Even after explaining his rationale, it was still a head-scratcher to me.

  The second, and just as important, reason we burned rubber over there was the growing feeling in my gut that had become too difficult to ignore. Every fiber of my being was pointing to Carole Dunning playing a crucial part in solving this case.

  Detective Stone, looking somewhat embarrassed that he’d not included Carole when creating his original suspect list, put up no argument with me. As we darted over to her place, I began to feel queasy. It didn’t come as a surprise. My stomach always turned at the mere mention of Carole. As much as my instincts were convinced that questioning Carole was imperative, on a personal level, I was not looking forward to this confrontation.

  As I previously mentioned to you, we had a spotty history. Given the circumstances of the detective and I going over to her place, our mutual dislike of each other would certainly not change.

  My stomach turned into knots at the mere thought of having to converse with her. As the woman that Jake dated after breaking up with her, I’d always drawn Carole’s ire, and she hadn’t been shy with her opinions. What really worried me was that Carole was emotionally unstable on even the best of days. How unhinged would she become on a day like this? Regardless of my personal feelings, I had to find a way to overcome them.

  Five minutes later, we arrived at Carole’s evergreen Vi
ctorian-era house. As the detective pulled into the driveway, my gut instinct became significantly stronger. At the same time, I felt an added wrinkle—a sense of dread struck me as Stone parked the car. A very bad feeling crept up on me that I tried to shake off unsuccessfully.

  I couldn’t help but wonder where this new disturbing twist was coming from. While I tried to settle my system down, the tumult in my gut must have made its way to my face without me realizing it.

  Detective Stone looked at the troubled expression on my face with great concern.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I didn’t always have the easiest time holding my tongue. During those times, in the absence of restraint, I found myself responding with blunt honesty. “Not really.”

  The detective clearly expected a different answer from me. When he didn’t get it, his eyes opened wide. He was clearly unsure of what could come out of my mouth next.

  I smoothed over the rough edges of my previous reply. “But I’ll find a way to work through it.”

  “What’s the matter now?”

  My tongue slipped again, allowing my uncensored thoughts to spill out. “Carole Dunning is the matter.”

  “Since you two have had such a history, are you sure you don’t want to sit this one out?” the detective asked.

  “No. It’s not about what I want to do. It’s about what I have to do.”

  He respected my answer enough not to argue with me.

  “All right. Let’s do this, then.”

  I stopped him briefly. “I am going to warn you, though. This could get really heated.”

  He was unfazed. “I’m a police detective. Believe me, nothing is going to happen in there that I can’t handle.”

  ***

  With my initial reservations out of the way, the detective and I got down to business. After receiving no answer from knocking on the front door, my assumptions seemed to be proven right. Questioning Carole as soon as possible did appear to be as crucial as I had predicted. Unfortunately, it looked like we’d arrived a smidge too late. Detective Stone knocked on the door again to no response.

  I decided to head around back to the rear door. There was a chance that if Carole was home and had spotted the detective approaching, she could have tried to dart out the back door. When I reached the rear of the house, I saw no sign of her or any shoe or bootprints in the snow. After giving the back door a few knocks, I received no answer either.

  From there, I headed over to the detached garage, where I peered into the side glass door to see if her car was parked inside. All I saw were some boxes, a shovel, and a lawnmower that wouldn’t be getting any use for months to come. As a further sign that we’d just missed her when I headed back to the front of the house, I saw what looked like relatively fresh tire marks in the driveway.

  I knew she couldn’t have left that long ago as it had recently begun to snow, and the indentation of the tires had not been completely covered in fresh powder. Now that it was clear that she was gone, the question became where had she gone, and when, if at all, would she be back?

  “This is not a good sign,” I said.

  “Yeah, but how bad is it?” he replied.

  “There’s a chance she just went out to the grocery store or the pharmacy or something.”

  I was trying to stay optimistic, but we both knew there was a much scarier alternative. What if she’d decided to skip town? She already had a head start. Alaska was a huge state with plenty of places to hide out. If there was ever a place to disappear and go completely off the grid, it was here. Even though I was jumping straight to the worst-case scenario, it also wasn’t entirely inconceivable.

  Detective Stone was clearly thinking along the same lines that I was. “We can’t really afford to take that chance.”

  “True.”

  “The good news is, it looks like she just left recently, so wherever she went, she couldn’t have gotten very far.”

  As time was not on our side, for the sake of being cautious, the detective put out an all-points bulletin for the entire state. Given the circumstances, there was no such thing as overreacting. After all, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  If anyone spotted Carole, we’d hear about it. As an added precaution, the detective assigned a car to park in front of her place in case she returned home. In the meantime, Stone and I had plenty more investigating to do.

  “So, where to now?” Detective Stone asked.

  “That one is easy. Diane Stanton’s place or bust,” I replied.

  Chapter Eleven

  It seemed odd to me that an understated person like Diane Stanton would live in the kitschiest apartment building in town. To me, it ran contrary to her very nature. Yet, there we were, approaching her front door at the Grand Frozen Pine Apartments. The name “Grand” was beyond comical. The building had an Old West, turn-of-the-century, Gold Rush-style theme, mimicking the town’s distinct history.

  Unlike an actual Old West building, however, this place was built in the seventies with subpar materials that were failing to stand up to the test of time. The façade out front was rusted and creaky, the wood was showing cracks, and the entire place as a whole was begging to be repaired. That wasn’t likely to come anytime soon, if ever.

  I had passed this building hundreds of times in my life, each time wondering who would live in a place so tacky. After all this time, I finally had an answer. As the detective and I approached Diane’s unit, I saw something crazy enough to pull my thoughts away from the kitschy design of the building.

  Against all laws of logic, instead of huddling inside under a pile of blankets, Diane Stanton was purposefully standing outside of her apartment in this freezing cold. If it wasn’t for this case, there would be no way I would be more than five feet away from my heater at home right now.

  Diane was a different breed of woman than me—that was for sure. She stood on her front step taking a puff of a cigarette, which made me immediately question her sanity. It was one thing to smoke, knowing all the health risks that were associated with cigarettes. To me, the bigger mystery was, who smoked in this weather?

  Clearly, the apartment complex had a “No Smoking” policy within their units, but that wasn’t what I was referring to. It was more that, if there was ever a good excuse to quit a nasty habit like smoking, a subzero temperature was it. Alas, that was the power of nicotine. It was so addictive that she was willing to brave the cold just for a few puffs.

  While I thought she’d be better off quitting smoking, her actions played into my hands. Diane was already out in the open. The detective and I didn’t have to draw her out of her apartment. I didn’t want to squander that stroke of luck.

  “How does weather like this not make you want to give up smoking?” I joked.

  Diane looked up at Detective Stone and me. The mousey, petite, thirty-one-year-old’s frame was dwarfed by the puffiness of her parka. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, which made her angular face stand out even more. She wore black-rimmed glasses and glanced at me with her chocolate-brown eyes.

  I had always found it peculiar that she’d chosen to be a receptionist. That was typically the domain of outgoing, charismatic people—things she most certainly wasn’t. Her general demeanor was that of a librarian—bookish, reserved, and soft-spoken.

  She was clearly surprised to see me, but in a way, she looked kind of happy as well. Then again, she had no idea why I was there. The smile she flashed my way would only make what was to come more awkward to delve into.

  “Andrea, what are you doing here?” Diane asked.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Is a cigarette really worth standing out in all of this cold for?” I replied.

  Diane looked embarrassed to admit it, but the answer clearly was yes. “I wish I could say it wasn’t, but these things are real stress relievers.”

  “What are you stressing over? Other than the obvious.”

  Did she have a guilty conscience? Or, was I just projecting?
I impatiently waited for her answer.

  “What aren’t I stressing over? I mean, I still can’t believe Jake is gone. He was the best boss I’ve ever had. Now that he’s gone, though, I have another problem.”

  “Which is?”

  Once again, I wondered if any feelings of guilt would find their way into her reply. I was left disappointed.

  “I’m out of a job.”

  Instead of just hammering her with questions about the murder, I decided to slowly build my way up to them. “Oh. Right. Well, I’m sure you’ll find something.”

  Diane wasn’t nearly as convinced. She turned her focus to the detective and raised her eyebrow at him. “Who is this with you?”

  Detective Stone got ready to pull out his badge. I spoke up before he had the chance to.

  “He’s a friend,” I replied.

  Thankfully, Stone went along with my ruse without any argument. At the same time, I was so relieved that Stone was a plainclothes detective instead of an officer in uniform. If it was the other way around, the entire conversation would have unfolded much differently. Diane bought my explanation that the detective was “just a friend.”

  She loosened up and moved on to a new line of thought. “By the way, what are you even doing here?”

  I decided to broach the subject like a mourning girlfriend instead of a sleuth. “I’m here about Jake.”

  Diane tensed up. “I’m really sorry for your loss. He was one of the good ones.”

  “He most certainly was,” I replied.

  The look of confusion on her face was as strong as ever. “I still don’t quite understand why you’re here.”

  “The police still haven’t figured out who killed him.”

  “That’s very unfortunate. But again, I’m at a loss as to why you’ve come to me.”

  “I have a feeling you might know who did this,” I said.

  Diane instantly went as stiff as a board. She tried to look befuddled, but I could tell it was just an act.