Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  “Detective Hadley,” the dispatcher’s raspy voice said.

  Joe picked up the radio. “This is Hadley.”

  “Mark Cambridge just came into the station,” the dispatcher said.

  “What for?”

  “To turn himself in for the murder of Walter Clayton.”

  Chapter Five

  The shock followed me all the way to the police station and beyond. Once inside, Joe went into an interrogation room and took Mark Cambridge’s confession. I’d kept this case at arm’s length for too long. My gut was telling me I could no longer afford to sit on the sidelines.

  Unfortunately, Joe disagreed. While I would have loved to have been in that interrogation room, my presence and distinct lack of police credentials were not welcome there. All I could do was sit at Joe’s desk and try to make sense of this new twist.

  That proved to be more difficult than I ever imagined. The news still had me reeling, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t make heads or tails of this. The problem was, even to an outside observer like myself who had not done the slightest bit of sleuthing on this case, something was amiss.

  Between my previous life as an actress on a detective television show, as well as the cases I’d investigated in real life, never once had a suspect just randomly turned themselves in. Even perpetrators who committed crimes as minor as shoplifting often pleaded their innocence relentlessly all the way into court.

  But for a murder suspect, a crime carrying the sentence of life in prison, to just freely confess to the crime without so much as prompting, it was unprecedented. That’s why none of this sat right with me.

  Joe couldn’t disagree more. An hour later, he exited the interrogation room and returned to his desk, appearing more than happy to close the book on this investigation.

  He plopped down in his chair and exhaled long and hard as relief came to his face. “Case closed.”

  Those were not the words I wanted to hear from my brother’s mouth—at least not at such an early stage in the game. Joe had just finished talking to Mark Cambridge and looked like he was ready to wrap a bow around this case and send it on its way. That overeagerness to move on didn’t sit well with me.

  Haste was rarely an investigator's best friend. In his rush to close the book on this case, there was a very real possibility that he wasn’t being as thorough as he needed to be to ensure that justice was truly being served.

  I thought all those things, full well knowing that Mark Cambridge had turned himself in and confessed to the crime. Still, something in my gut was telling me there was more at play. My instincts were usually spot on, so I wasn’t about to start questioning them now. That being said, I had no evidence to support my suspicions, so I had to proceed with caution.

  I hated arguing with my brother, but in this case, I didn’t see any choice.

  “No,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows at me in disbelief. “What?”

  “Something is very wrong here.”

  Joe’s eyes rolled back in his head. I knew he wasn’t going to be a happy camper, but he responded with an exasperation that surprised even me. “Now you want to get involved in the case? After it has been solved?”

  With my brother already so riled up, I was forced to do a delicate dance. I didn’t want to inflame him any further, but at the same time, I wanted to get my point across.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t think it has been solved,” I replied.

  “Mark Cambridge turned himself in.”

  Joe meant that as a definitive punctuation mark to this case. To me, it was the source of my uneasiness.

  “Exactly. He turned himself in,” I repeated.

  My brother looked at me, more confused than ever. “I’m sorry. I’m not following. What more do you want?”

  “Joe, no one willingly turns themselves in and confesses to committing murder.”

  He opened his mouth to argue with me, but I continued.

  “Shoplifters don’t even turn themselves in. How many times have you had to rake a suspect over the coals in the interrogation room to get them to admit they stole something as small as a few packs of cigarettes?”

  Joe didn’t dispute my point; rather, he threw out a theory of his own. “Maybe Mark had a guilty conscience that was eating him up inside.”

  As I stared into my brother’s eyes, I didn’t like what I saw. There wasn’t a look of great confidence in his pupils. Yet a rush to judgment was ever present. Just as I suspected, Joe wanted this case to be over with so he could move on to something else.

  While I hated the stress and uncertainty involved in a murder investigation, I didn’t want quick closure to come at the expense of the truth. What was the point of closing the case if there were still loose ends? Until those were tied up, I wouldn’t be satisfied.

  I shook my head as I thought about Joe’s last point. My gut was still warning me this case wasn’t over yet. “No. Something else is going on here.”

  Joe groaned. “Not all murder cases have to be fraught with frustration. We don’t always have to take the path of most resistance. Sometimes, when we get lucky enough, the answer really does fall into our laps. When it does, we’d be wise to appreciate it, especially because it does come around so rarely.”

  They were all good points, none of which could I outright dismiss. What they didn’t do was squash the doubts in my mind about this case.

  I pressed on. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I have a really strong feeling in my gut that we’re missing something.”

  He indulged me. “What are we missing?”

  “I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it’s there.”

  Joe looked like he could blow his top, but he mustered enough restraint to keep from biting my head off. “You’re my sister, and I love you, but you are insufferable sometimes.”

  It was unfortunate that compliments were so often used as nothing more than a preface for an insult. It was quite an accomplishment, fitting both sentiment and criticism all in one sentence. I knew why he’d done it. He hoped that the “I love you” would be enough to mask the fact that he’d called me insufferable. But really, the only part that stuck with me was being called insufferable.

  I didn’t take it to heart. His frustration had just gotten the better of him. In the best interest of the case, I let his comment roll off of my back. Besides, one of the loose ends of this case stuck out to me and begged following up on.

  “What about your hunch about Adam Leary?” I asked.

  How could he skirt that question? He was the one to raise the suspicion about Sadie’s fiancé in the first place. Would he pretend like that didn’t happen now?

  “Who cares about that?” Joe replied. “We have a confession from Mark.”

  “But your hunch about Adam had to come from somewhere.”

  “Sometimes my hunches are wrong. Face it, the killer is Mark Cambridge, whether you like it or not.”

  I was getting nowhere with my brother. If I wanted answers, I had to go to the source. I decided to do just that.

  “I need to talk to Mark Cambridge.”

  Chapter Six

  Joe wasn’t happy with me, but he also wasn’t going to stop me from seeing Mark. A deputy led me into the cell block where Mark was being held. It was so drab and depressing. The kind of place that could kill a man’s spirit. And that was just the block itself.

  His fellow inmates only added to the dour atmosphere. When we reached Mark’s cell, his eyes were shut tight. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was praying or if he couldn’t bear to look at the cell block any longer.

  While he was sitting down, I almost forgot that he was over six feet tall. When he was upright, he was a towering man, long and lean, like the high school volleyball player he’d been forty years before. He was in his late fifties now but had taken such good care of his body that, from behind, he could easily pass for early forties if he wanted to. While his frame was still in tip-top shape, the same could not b
e said for his face.

  Time and tragedy had taken a big recent toll on him. The emergence of stress lines on his face had become quite numerous since his daughter’s murder a year ago. That wasn’t all. He used to have a dynamite smile, which he flashed constantly. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t seen it since his daughter’s passing, nor probably would I ever again. It had most likely died with Sadie.

  I stopped in front of his cell, but he didn’t open his eyes. It couldn’t have been because he didn’t hear me. My shoes made a very distinct sound as I walked on the concrete. Maybe he didn’t care who it was because he didn’t want to see anyone right now. There was only one way to find out.

  “Mark, it doesn’t even seem real seeing you like this,” I said.

  Recognizing my voice, he opened his eyes. He looked wildly surprised to see me.

  “Hope, what are you doing here?” Mark asked.

  It was far from a warm greeting. Then again, how warm could a man truly be when trapped in a five-by-seven-foot jail cell? At the same time, I figured that with his only company being the other inmates on the cell block, that he’d be happy to see a familiar face like mine. That was not the case. If anything, he looked like he wanted to shoo me away.

  “I heard the news that you’d turned yourself in, and I couldn’t believe it,” I said.

  “Well, believe it now, because it’s the truth.”

  Mark said the words, but there was no conviction behind them. He looked like he was just reluctantly going through the motions. If this was a scene in one of the many acting classes I’d taken over the years, the teacher would have called him out for not delivering a believable performance.

  Since this wasn’t just some class, I was the one to question him. “Do you really expect me to believe that you killed Walter Clayton?”

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t even pull off making that one-word answer sound believable. My suspicion kept building by the moment. He didn’t seem to realize that his mouth said one thing, but his eyes said another. I always believed someone’s eyes. Being the windows to the soul, they had a much harder time lying.

  “Why—?” I began asking.

  Mark cut me off. “Why did I do it? Because Walter killed my daughter and got away with it. That’s why.”

  If he hadn’t been so quick to interrupt me, he would have realized that I was trying to ask him a different question.

  I finished my original question. “I meant, why did you turn yourself in?”

  That he had no quick and easy answer to. “The uh…guilt got to be too much for me to hold inside anymore.”

  The pause in the middle of his response made me feel like he was making this all up as he went. What was with his hesitation? That question should have provided a definitive answer. As it didn’t, I kept peppering him with questions.

  “How did you do it?”

  “What do you mean? I just went over to his house and I killed him.”

  That was as vague an answer as I’d heard in a long time. If he wanted to convince me that he was guilty, he was sure doing a poor job of it. “I was talking specifics. Was it premeditated, or did you just go over there in a fit of rage and kill him in the heat of the moment?”

  Mark began squirming. For someone who’d apparently murdered a man, he sure seemed sheepish right then.

  He tried wriggling out of answering my question. “I’d rather not get into specifics.”

  Not so fast.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because, it’s disturbing enough that I did it without having to relive all the details blow by blow.”

  That was a fair point. Besides, there were other ways to get the information I was looking for. I asked him what should have been an easy question to answer.

  “How did you cover your tracks?”

  As I expected, he nearly tripped over his words as he stammered.

  “Wait. What?” he asked.

  “The police have been investigating this case for a day, searching for every piece of evidence and following every lead they could find. Yet until you turned yourself in and confessed to the crime, you weren’t their prime suspect. How did you cover your tracks so they didn’t immediately figure out that you were the killer?”

  The stammering continued as the pall of uncertainty was cast further over the proceedings. He was barely able to make it a few words at a time without pausing to think about what he was going to say next. “Oh. Well, I, uh, wore gloves so that there would be no fingerprints. Then I disposed of the murder weapon so the police would have little to go on.”

  Mark was really reaching. Even more, he was doing a poor job of it. The whole conversation made me feel like I was in the middle of a bad improv sketch, only this was real and had dire implications.

  I stared deep into his eyes then finally let him know how I really felt.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He became argumentative. “That doesn’t matter. The truth is the truth.”

  I nodded. “It is. Only I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”

  In a fit of frustration, Mark snapped at me. “Why are you doing this?”

  I turned things right back on him. “No. The real question is, why did you turn yourself in for a crime you didn’t commit?”

  He made one last attempt to convince me of his guilt. “I’m a murderer.”

  I had to hand it to him. He’d made a valiant effort. Yet it still wasn’t nearly enough to convince me. At the same time, he was giving me more and more friction with each question I asked him, to the point where he looked like he was going to shut down. Since he wasn’t budging, nor was I, that left me with only two choices—leave right then or stay and become increasingly more frustrated.

  Reluctantly, I made my decision.

  Chapter Seven

  After my frustrating discussion with Mark, I had to get some air. While the cell block was clearly the most stifling and claustrophobic area in the entire building, I found that there was no corner of the police station that offered any relief of my anxiety. As I darted out of the station, my haste to breathe fresh air had caught Joe’s attention, spurring him to follow me out to the sidewalk.

  He approached me as I stood on the corner of the street, looking out into the distance. With my back turned to him, he didn’t see the solemn and perplexed look on my face.

  “Are you satisfied now?” he asked.

  I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t turn around to him.

  Sensing my discontent, he moved next to me and tried to catch my gaze, but I was still busy looking out at the horizon. He was ready to talk, but I was still trying to make sense of my previous conversation with Mark Cambridge.

  It had left an extremely bitter taste that I couldn’t get out of my mouth. I felt like I was staring at a puzzle that was missing a considerably large piece. No matter what angle I tried to tackle this case from, things just didn’t add up.

  Realizing that I’d kept Joe waiting an abnormally long time without a response, I pulled my head out of the clouds and answered.

  “I’m far from satisfied.”

  He stared into my eyes. The deeper he looked, the more concerned he became. What did he see in my eyes that made him so uneasy? Before I had the chance to ask, he revealed the answer.

  “Is that your way of telling me that you’re going to investigate this case yourself?”

  That was an awfully big conclusion to jump to. Although, to be fair, given my past, it wasn’t the craziest leap to take. In truth, it wasn’t one that I’d even taken myself. Honestly, I had just come outside for some fresh air—nothing more. Unfortunately, there I was, getting plenty of air, only to have my thoughts remain just as jumbled as ever.

  I sighed. What a mess. With everything that was going on, I already had enough to wrestle with before throwing being at odds with Joe into the mix.

  I wanted to give my brother a little reassurance before he flew off the handle. “I just have a lot of thoughts bo
uncing around and need to work through them myself.”

  The look of concern on his face didn’t completely vanish but did dissipate somewhat. Now that he was confident that I wasn’t just going to rush out and take on the role of cavalier amateur sleuth, he turned a comforting eye towards me.

  “Okay. In that case, just know that I’m here for you if you need me.”

  “I know that. Thank you.”

  He gave me a smile. “What else are brothers for?”

  That question had so many possible answers that I had to laugh. Joe had both frustrated and confounded me already, and the day was still quite young. It turned out brothers were for a lot of things, both good and bad. Right then, thankfully, the good far outweighed the bad.

  Chapter Eight

  After Joe had gone back inside to fill out a sizable amount of paperwork related to the case, I realized that grabbing some fresh air alone wasn’t enough to really clear my head. I felt the sudden urge to stretch my legs as well.

  I didn’t know where my feet wanted to take me, but they definitely didn’t want to be lingering at the police station any longer. Before I knew it, I found myself walking away, hoping the change in scenery would distract me from my thoughts. It was a nice idea, but my mind had other plans, drifting back to Mark turning himself in.

  The longer I thought about it, the less it made sense. He was clearly hiding something from me. I just didn’t know what it was. In truth, there were only two people who knew the answer to that question.

  One was in a jail cell, keeping the truth locked away from me. The other could only be reached by prayer. After my failure with Mark, I hoped for success by turning to God. The Lord had an answer. He knew everything. The problem was, his replies did not always come as quickly as I wanted them to.

  I set out on my walk, praying for guidance and clarity. Twenty minutes later, no answers had come to me, but I did manage to burn off a lot of excess energy.

  While my mind drifted back and forth aimlessly, my feet settled on a definite direction. When I was finally able to pull my head out of the clouds, I found myself on Oak Grove Avenue, which was quite familiar territory.