Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  He had ample motive of his own. Sadie was his fiancé. They had the wedding date all picked out. He was madly in love with her. Then, in one instant, Walter Clayton changed everything. In the year since Sadie’s death, Adam hadn’t fully recovered from the loss.

  I had heard that he hadn’t gone on a single date with a new woman, nor did he have plans to. The grief of losing his fiancé was still too much for him to deal with. His focus was trying to get through the mourning process. He was too busy wrestling with grief to think about starting a new relationship. These were all things I’d heard before Walter had been acquitted then subsequently murdered. With all that had happened in the last few days, no doubt he had an all-new set of emotions to grapple with.

  “Some days it’s dessert or bust,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, dessert can only do so much. A lot of the time, it’s just enough to get me through the day,” Adam replied.

  “Adam, if there’s anything I can do—”

  He stopped me. “Hope, I know you mean well, but there’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the problem. After all this time, I can’t make any sense of this—Sadie’s murder, or…how Walter could have been acquitted.”

  Adam was choked up. There was something else he wanted to say, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. Finally, he let out a deep exhale, then finished.

  “Can you make sense of this?” he asked.

  I shook my head. All I could think of were platitudes, which would do no good in a situation like this.

  “No. Actually, with Walter’s murder, I’m more confused than ever.”

  He disagreed. “I don’t know. That’s the one thing lately that’s actually made me feel better.”

  I stared him down. What a brazen thing to say. He felt better with Walter having been murdered? Most people wanted Walter behind bars, not six feet underground.

  I didn’t know exactly how to respond to that. Suddenly, I found myself wrestling with a few different answers. As Adam’s words hung in the air, he became self-conscious and made an attempt to revise his previous statement.

  “That came out wrong.”

  “How did you mean it to come out?” I asked.

  “Obviously, I would have preferred if the jury had made the right decision and put him behind bars for life. But, seeing as how they didn’t, I’m glad justice has at least been served.”

  He said “obviously,” but his statements were anything but. His revision was only mildly better. It made me wonder if his first statement had not been a mistake at all but rather a Freudian slip.

  My expectation for this conversation had been completely turned on its head. I’d come into the restaurant for a snack, but it looked like some questions about the murder were begging to be asked. I just had to figure out how to broach the topic. After all, Adam wasn’t exactly emotionally stable.

  After thinking it over, I believed I had the right approach to go with. “Yeah. It’s a crazy world we live in. I don’t know about you, but I was livid when I heard the jury read the verdict.”

  His eyes lit up with rage. “I’m right with you there. They were going to let him get away with murder.”

  “I spent the whole night with my boyfriend ranting about their decision. How about you? What did you do that night?”

  “I just stayed home, trying to make sense of it all.”

  “Did you have anyone with you to comfort you at least?”

  He shook his head.

  I did not like those answers. Adam had been home alone with no one to corroborate his alibi, trying to work through his anger about Walter’s acquittal. At least, those were his words. What if he wasn’t able to work through his anger and had gone over to Walter’s place to seek revenge? After all, my brother had originally thought that Adam was the prime suspect in this case. Had his hunch been correct all along?

  I continued the conversation with an eye towards the investigation. “Did you know that Mark Cambridge turned himself in for the murder?”

  Adam nodded.

  “It’s pretty crazy, huh? I mean, who could believe he’d do something like that?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, I know him. A man like Mark, he’d never do anything like that.”

  “You two were really close, weren’t you?”

  That was more of a rhetorical question than anything. Before her death, Sadie had told me how happy she was that her father and fiancé got along so well. Everyone had heard the horror stories about future in-laws that hated each other. If anything, Mark and Adam were just the opposite. There was no drama between them.

  Adam opened up to me. “Mark never officially became my father-in-law, but I always kind of feel like he was the father I never had.”

  In a lot of ways, that made perfect sense. Adam was raised by a single mother. His biological father had never really been in his life. He’d left Adam’s mom when Adam was just a toddler. Adam didn’t have any memories of the man. When a man grew up without any fatherly influence, he often looked for that paternal influence elsewhere. Apparently, Mark Cambridge had filled that void.

  After Adam’s big reveal, he looked like he was about to tear up. The situation became too much for him to bear. “Anyway, I’m getting really emotional. I’m going to head home.”

  “Okay. Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” I said.

  Adam got up from the table and left the restaurant, but my suspicion remained behind, growing larger the more I thought about it. After all, Adam had both a motive and an unverifiable alibi. That was not a recipe for unmistakable innocence. At the same time, were those the necessary ingredients to point to his guilt?

  Chapter Eleven

  The cemetery where Sadie was buried was on the way home from the restaurant. Normally, I tried to avoid going by there. Every time I did, I got teary. This time, my mind was so wrapped up in thinking about why Mark Cambridge had turned himself in that I’d forgotten to find a detour around the cemetery.

  As expected, as I went by, my eyes welled up. Only unlike other times, I decided to embrace my feelings. To let them pour out. Maybe it would ease some tension to let it all out.

  After all, it was an emotional day. There was no way of closing myself off on an afternoon like this. So I didn’t shy away from my feelings and let the tears flow.

  That wasn’t all. Since I was already there, I decided to pay her gravesite a visit. I knew it was only her body that was buried here and that her soul was up in heaven, but this was a tangible way to visit her and pay my respects one more time.

  Sadie’s headstone was dark gray and about three feet tall. It wasn’t flashy at all, like some of those other gaudy cemetery plots were sometimes. That kind of ostentatiousness didn’t suit her. She’d always been humble in life, so why would she be flashy in death?

  When I arrived at her grave, my focus shifted elsewhere. A bouquet of flowers was on the grass in front of the headstone. Someone had been here recently. But who? There was no way to tell. It could have been anyone. Still, it would have been nice to know.

  Before I could fully contemplate who had brought the flowers, I realized that I had unexpected company. Patsy Davidson, a retired septuagenarian math teacher who I’d once had for arithmetic, was kneeling at the adjacent tombstone. Whenever I thought of Patsy, one quote always came to my mind—“Even when life didn’t add up, math always did.” She used to say that all the time in class.

  I hadn’t seen Patsy in years. This was hardly the best place to reconnect. She didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk anyway.

  Patsy was praying hard in front of the gravestone. The timing of us running into each other was quite odd. There we were, in this big cemetery, with no one else around. Not even a gardener in sight. Yet we just happened to come visit grave sites that were right beside each other.

  I got ready to close my eyes and pray silently to Sadie. Before the words came to me, Patsy spoke up.


  “Hope?”

  Apparently I was wrong. Patsy was looking for a conversation. It turned out that prayer would have to wait. I turned to Patsy. She appeared to be trying to hold back tears.

  “Hi, Mrs. Davidson.”

  She preferred that I took a less formal approach. “You can call me Patsy.”

  “Of course. Sorry, Mrs. Davidson.” So much for heeding her advice. I corrected myself. “I mean, Patsy. Calling you Mrs. Davidson is just a force of habit from my school days.”

  “It’s quite all right.”

  Now that we’d sorted out the technicalities of how to address her, it was time to get down to more important matters.

  “You look like you could use a hug,” I said.

  “I suppose I do,” she replied.

  I leaned in and gave her a hug.

  When I pulled back, she looked happy to have the comfort, however brief. The relief on her face didn’t last long. It was quickly replaced by more grief.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I was confused. If there was one place where an apology wasn’t necessary, it was at a cemetery. After all, who didn’t have a sad story to tell here?

  “What do you have to be sorry about?” I asked.

  “I didn’t realize I’d still get so emotional after all this time.”

  Patsy’s story was a tragic one. Two years ago, her only daughter had lost her battle with lung cancer at the all-too-young age of forty-three. Emily Davidson had been nobly fighting the disease for thirty-eight months before tragically passing away. Like that, the once-promising pharmacist, not to mention pride and joy of her mother, was gone.

  As was to be expected, Patsy took the loss hard. The only real surprise was how long the grieving process had lasted. Even now, a full two years after her passing, Patsy was as broken up as ever. When I looked into her eyes, I doubted that she’d ever be the same again.

  I turned a sympathetic eye to her. “After losing your daughter, how could you not get emotional?”

  It was more than that. Patsy had the look of someone who hadn’t made the least bit of progress in moving on. Like she was incapable of it. As if she was resigned to spending the rest of her life in various stages of grief. Raw emotions began pouring out of her. “They say that time heals all wounds, but this one still feels like there’s salt in it.”

  There was a new tug at my heartstrings each time she responded with such sorrow.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said.

  I wished that I could come up with something better, but words betrayed me. All I could think to do was just extend my sympathy and give her a shoulder to cry on if she wanted one.

  She continued letting her emotions spill out. “To this day, I still ask how this could have happened. It just doesn’t add up.”

  The loss of her daughter was one thing. How, of all things, she’d gotten lung cancer was a nagging unsolved mystery that appeared to have no answer. The family had no history of cancer. Moreover, Emily hadn’t been a smoker. I don’t think she’d lit up a single cigarette in her entire life. Yet there she was, the victim of lung cancer.

  While losing her daughter under any circumstances would have been devastating, for her to contract such a particular type of cancer was befuddling. It was the randomness that was so perplexing to her. But that was just the nature of cancer. Sometimes it came out of nowhere. Who contracted it and who was able to fight it off was nothing more than a game of cosmic chance sometimes. That brought no comfort to Patsy, who was still trying to make sense of it all.

  “Sometimes life is just random,” I said.

  “That’s not an easy solution for a mathematician to accept. My profession is based on hard numbers, not random chance.”

  It was one of those times when I wished that I had more than just simple words of comfort to give her. It would have been nice to give her a concrete answer. That just wasn’t possible. She was a much smarter woman than I was, and she was at a complete loss. What chance did that leave me?

  All I had at my disposal were words of comfort. Still, it was better to say them than to stay silent. Sometimes a little empathy went a long way.

  “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. I wish there was more I could do for you,” I replied.

  “So do I.” She turned back to her daughter’s headstone. “If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s how little we really have control of. There’s a lot more to the world than we’ll ever understand. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

  I lent her more encouragement. “If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

  She grimaced then let out a groan as her frustration became too much to leave bottled up inside. “The one thing that’s so hard for me to get over is how unnatural it all is to lose a child. Parents are supposed to die first. That’s the natural order of things. No mother should ever have to bury her daughter.”

  I was running out of words of encouragement. Patsy just seemed to keep sinking deeper into her depression. I searched for anything that could make her feel better. Once again, an answer escaped me.

  Despite my best efforts, my frustration came out. “I know. The problem is, you’re a logical person in an illogical world. The reason you’re having trouble making sense of this is because cancer doesn’t make sense. It makes up its own rules.”

  That statement made her silent. Uh-oh. I suddenly wished that I could take it back.

  Finally, Patsy opened her mouth to reply. “That’s probably the most truthful thing I’ve heard in a while. And you’re right.”

  That was news to me. I was unable to keep the look of confusion off of my face. “I am?”

  Patsy nodded. “Yeah. Maybe the answer is that there is no answer.”

  That was far too defeatist for my tastes. What we needed right now was some optimism, even if it was only a shred. Anything to keep things from unraveling any further.

  I made another effort to pull her out of her funk. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

  She stopped me. “It’s okay. This isn’t your fault. Nor is it mine. Like you said, cancer makes up its own rules.” Patsy let her deepest emotions run free again. “You know, I would have done anything for Emily. I would have taken a bullet for her.”

  “You would have?”

  There was no hesitation in her voice as she answered. “Of course. I don’t know a parent who wouldn’t. Here’s the thing, though. In the end, the one thing that killed her was something I had no control over. I’ve spent all this time feeling so powerless, looking for answers inside me. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place. The universe has answers. I’m convinced of it. I just have to find the right place to look for them.”

  “Well, you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  Patsy agreed. “I will.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The conversation with Patsy gave me a lot to think about. As a matter of fact, while I headed home, it took up all of my focus. One thing she said in particular stuck out in my head. When she told me she would have taken a bullet for her child, I didn’t doubt her.

  Nor did I question her when she mentioned that every parent she knew would do the same. While Patsy had been talking about her daughter specifically, those words could also apply to this murder investigation.

  I’d spent the entire day wondering why Mark Cambridge had decided to take the fall for a crime that I believed he hadn’t committed. Finally, the answer occurred to me. As did the realization of who the real killer was.

  The answer had been right in front of me all along. I just didn’t want to admit the truth, because it was terrifying. As awful as it was, it didn’t make it any less true. The time to delay was over. I had to face the facts.

  The next morning, I paid a visit to Palmer’s Insurance Agency, where David Cambridge worked. I would have gone to see him at his house again, but I wanted to talk to him when he was sober. While the bottle had gotten the best of him recently, I kn
ew he wouldn’t dare risk his job by showing up drunk.

  I strode into his office with a head full of steam. “What’s a life worth these days?”

  David was staring out into the distance, lost in thought. He looked surprised to see me as he tore his eyes away from the window.

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

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over for the last day. Why would your father confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”

  David changed the subject. “I have work to do. This is not the time or the place for this.”

  “Actually, it is. Especially because I finally figured out the answer.”

  David sighed, knowing I wasn’t about to just walk away. “Fine. What’s the answer?”

  “Sometimes a father will do anything for his child—including taking the fall for him.”

  David was losing his grip on his temper. “Wait a minute. I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

  “Neither do I. They say that the truth hurts, but I never realized it could be this painful. I mean, here you are, going to work and selling life insurance policies like it’s any other day. Meanwhile, your father is going to spend the rest of his life in jail for a crime that you committed.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he barked.

  I didn’t back down. “I don’t? Come on, David, who do you think you’re fooling? Because it’s not me.”

  He tried arguing with me, but I cut him off.

  “You said you knew that your father didn’t commit this crime. But how could you really know that, unless you were the one to actually do it?”

  David tensed up, having no answer for that.

  I continued. “Why are you letting him take the fall for you?”

  He lowered his head, trying to come up with a response. When he thought he had a suitable one, he looked up and saw the resolve on my face.

  David came clean. “When my dad figured out that I’d killed Walter, he couldn’t stand the thought of me spending the rest of my life in prison. So he decided to confess, even though he didn’t do anything. I tried to reason with my dad. I begged him not to take the fall for me, but he wouldn’t listen. He told me I had my whole life ahead of me, that he’d already seen my sister’s life cut tragically short, and that the idea of me serving a life sentence in prison was too much for him to take.”