I turned the table right back on her. “Who do you think told us about the breakup in the first place?”
“Isn’t it obvious why she told you that? She just wanted to deflect the blame from herself,” Maureen insisted.
“Which is what you’re trying to do right now,” I said.
Maureen shook her head. “No. I’m telling you, Colleen Conway is trouble. She’s the one you should be paying close attention to.”
I set Maureen straight. “Enough about Colleen. We’re here to talk about you. Now, about this breakup of yours—”
Maureen finally gave in a little. “Fine. Yes. Luke and I broke up. That doesn’t mean I killed him.”
Joe countered. “No, but it definitely gives you a motive for wanting him dead. You know what they say about a woman scorned—”
“For the last time, I didn’t do this,” Maureen snapped.
Joe remained calm. “Why are you yelling? That only makes you look guilty.”
Maureen’s temper continued to flare. “That’s it. I want you to leave.”
Joe put his foot down. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“This is my house,” she argued.
“And you’re a murder suspect,” Joe replied.
“Stop saying the word murder,” Maureen insisted.
“What’s the matter? Is it hitting too close to the bone?” I asked.
“I’m only going to say this one more time. Get out of my house,” Maureen barked.
“That sounded like a threat. Did you really just threaten a police officer?” Joe said.
Maureen became intimidated by my brother’s stare. She broke eye contact with him and grew jittery. Maureen was all over the map. She seemed to be unraveling right before our eyes.
As Maureen looked down, her silence really stuck out. As did her lack of response to my brother’s question.
Joe decided to call her out.
“Maureen, we’re not going anywhere. Now, answer my question,” my brother demanded.
Maureen responded in a completely unexpected way. She reached into her purse, pulled out a can of pepper spray, and quickly sprayed my brother in the face.
My brother yelled as the pepper spray got in his eyes. Maureen wasn’t done there. She pointed the can at me next, but I was ready for her. As Maureen went to try to spray me, I knocked the can out of her hands.
While that disarmed her, it also managed to ramp up her anger to a whole new level. Maureen suddenly bull-rushed me and slammed me into her cupboard door. That move managed to stun me long enough to allow Maureen to dart out of her kitchen.
As every bone in my body suddenly ached, Maureen took off down her hallway towards the back of her house. I took a moment to catch my breath then grabbed the can of pepper spray from the tile floor.
Across the kitchen, I heard my brother groan.
“Joe, are you okay?” I asked.
My brother turned on the sink and splashed some water into his eyes. He then wiped his eyes with a dish towel that was draped over the sink and turned to me.
“We can’t let her get away,” he said.
Joe grabbed the gun from his holster and darted towards the hallway. I followed right behind my brother.
Just before we reached the hallway, we heard a door slam loudly. As we rounded the corner from the kitchen and entered the hallway, we both saw that the bedroom door at the back of the house was closed.
Joe reached the bedroom first and tried to turn the doorknob. As we both suspected, the door was locked.
Joe yelled at the door. “Maureen, open the door right now, or I’m going to kick it in.”
My brother received no response from Maureen.
He gave her one more moment to respond. When she didn’t, he attempted to kick the door in.
TV shows and movies made it look easy. In Hollywood depictions, a detective was always able to kick a door in on the first try. It wasn’t like that in real life. That was especially true in my brother’s case.
Joe kicked the door, all right, but came up against some resistance.
My brother winced immediately as if he had just kicked a cement block. Even more, the door didn’t budge.
“Ow,” Joe yelled.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Joe gritted his teeth and let out another groan. “She must have slid something in front of the door. I’m not going to be able to kick this in.”
“So, what do we do now?” I replied.
My brother pounded on the door with his fist and tried to egg Maureen on.
“If you’re so innocent, why did you run from us?” Joe asked.
He received no response.
I shook my head, still in disbelief over the situation we found ourselves in. “I knew there was something shady about her.”
Joe kept his focus on the door. “Maureen, you might as well come out. You can’t escape.”
A prescient thought came to me.
I stopped my brother and whispered into his ear. “Actually, what if she’s making a break for it out the back window?”
My brother’s eyes opened wide. He whispered back to me. “You stay here. Be ready with that pepper spray if she comes out.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going after her,” he said.
Instead of going all the way to the front of the house and winding his way around to the back, Joe darted into the adjacent spare bedroom across the hallway and headed over to the window. Once there, he slid the window open, climbed outside the bungalow, and ran into Maureen’s backyard.
I waited nervously in the hallway, hoping for a peaceful resolution, even if I knew the odds of that were close to zero now. Then again, it never hurt to pray.
A few seconds later, I heard Joe’s voice yelling from outside.
“Maureen, you’re surrounded. Drop your gun and put your hands up,” Joe said.
Wait a minute. She had a gun, too? Oh, dear. Things were even worse than I thought. No wonder Maureen had been so eager to dart back into her bedroom. That was apparently where she kept her gun.
Before I had a chance to even catch my breath, my brother continued his statement.
“You’re under arrest for pepper-spraying a police officer,” Joe said. “But I have a feeling that’s not all you did. You sprayed me because you knew it was only a matter of time before we found out that you were the one to kill Luke Murphy, right?” Joe said.
I then heard Maureen’s voice reply to him from inside her locked bedroom. “I’m not going to jail. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life behind bars.”
“You should have thought of that before. Now, there is no escape. Face it, you’re going to jail,” Joe said.
Maureen refused to believe that. “No. This isn’t how it ends.”
“Maureen, drop the gun and put your hands up,” my brother demanded.
“This is all Luke’s fault. Why wasn’t my love enough for him? Why couldn’t he have just loved me as much I loved him? Don’t you see? He’s the scumbag. He got what he deserved,” Maureen explained.
“And now you’re going to get what you deserve. You can’t just kill a man because he cheated on you. Now, drop the gun,” Joe argued.
“I already told you, I’m not spending the rest of my life in jail. I’m not doing it,” Maureen replied.
“I’m going to tell you one last time—drop the gun and put your hands up,” Joe demanded.
The tension was palpable. Things could get explosive at any moment. The desperation in Maureen’s voice gave me an awful feeling. My gut was telling me that she had no intention of dropping the gun.
At the same time, my brother wasn’t about to back down. Something had to give.
Then something did. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier, I heard a loud popping sound coming from the other side of the door. The noise was unmistakable. It was a gunshot.
I panicked as my heart began to race. Had Maureen just fired at my brother? If so, had her
shot hit him?
There was no way I could stand idly by any longer. I needed answers, and there was only one way to get them. Instinctively, I darted towards the open window in the spare bedroom and went outside.
As I rushed towards the backyard, my heart was beating faster than it ever had before.
I called out to my brother. “Joe, are you okay?”
I rounded the corner and reached Maureen’s backyard, where I saw my brother standing in shock.
“Joe,” I said.
He slowly turned to me.
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
Joe finally nodded at me. “Yeah.”
“Thank God,” I said.
After receiving an initial jolt of relief from finding out that my brother was okay, my thoughts quickly turned to Maureen.
“What happened?” I asked.
Joe didn’t answer me verbally at first. He just approached the window to Maureen’s bedroom and stared inside. While I was completely confused, his face was filled with shock.
Once again, I asked my brother for clarity. “Joe, what happened?”
Joe took a moment then finally answered.
“She shot herself,” he said.
“She what?”
“I can’t believe it. Instead of going jail, she decided to commit suicide,” Joe replied.
Chapter Fifteen
What a crazy end to the case. On one hand, we had found Luke’s killer. On the other, with Maureen’s suicide, a much different kind of justice had been served. I couldn’t bear to look at Maureen’s body. It just seemed like too grim of a sight. The coroner arrived on the scene twenty minutes later and bagged Maureen’s body up in preparation to transport it to the morgue.
I still couldn’t believe how things had ended. For the second case in a row, there had been a violent conclusion. Was this the new normal? I sure hoped that it wasn’t.
My heart continued to race as I tried to process what had happened. “That got out of hand in a hurry.”
Joe wasn’t in much better shape. As a matter of fact, his usually steady hand was gone. He looked as rattled as ever.
My brother answered with wide eyes. “I’ll say.”
“I guess it’s too much to ask for a simple open-and-shut case, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? That would be too boring for the universe,” he deadpanned.
“Boring has never looked more appetizing to me,” I joked.
Usually, jokes were able to cut the tension. Not this time. Joe remained as stiff as ever. To the point where I began to worry about him.
“Joe, are you okay?” I asked.
He let out a sigh. “I just can’t believe what happened.”
I nodded. “After what happened at the end of the last case, I know what you mean.”
Joe took another deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Anything I can do to make you feel better?”
He didn’t give me an answer.
I tried to appeal to his appetite. “How about I buy you a donut?”
Joe threw out another suggestion. “How about a drink?”
“I could do that. If ever there was a good time for a drink, it’s now.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Joe said.
“Good. It’s settled then. A drink, on me,” I said.
My brother turned to me with a look of gratitude in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Of course. You deserve it.”
He felt the need to clarify his previous point.
“No. I meant, thank you for always looking out for me. For being there for me. And for investigating this case with me. If I had been working this one alone, I’m not sure that we would have found the killer so quickly,” Joe said.
I smiled at him. “You’re welcome. You can always count on me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I was puzzled. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Just that I thought you were considering giving up sleuthing.”
“I was.”
“What changed your mind?” Joe asked.
“Ever since my near-death experience, I have been wanting things to go back to normal in my life. Then it occurred to me that maybe I’m not meant to live a normal life,” I said.
“It’s hard to argue with that. You’re the most extraordinary animal-shelter manager turned amateur sleuth I have ever met,” he joked.
I chuckled. “Way to flatter your older sister.”
“In all seriousness, it’s good to have you on board.”
I nodded. “Now, why don’t we get that drink?”
“Actually, now that I think about it, I might take you up on that donut first. After all, it’s not good to drink on an empty stomach.”
I laughed. “Once a donut-loving detective, always a donut-loving detective, huh?”
Joe smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
The End.
Killer Injustice
Chapter One
“We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched the television. It had to be a mistake.
“Did I just hear that right? Did that foreman really just say ‘not guilty’?” I asked.
My boyfriend, Daniel Jacobsen, reluctantly nodded.
No. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a mistake. Of all the murder cases that had ever gone before a jury in Hollywood, Florida, this one seemed to be the most clear-cut. I didn’t know anyone who believed Walter Clayton was innocent. When the television cameraman zoomed in on Walter’s face in the courtroom before the verdict had been read, even he looked like he expected to be convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, Sadie Cambridge.
Yet the jury surprised us all. I could not take this news sitting down. This had some dire implications not just for my emotions but for those closest to me. My brother, Joe Hadley, the local police detective, had done painstaking work to build up the case against Walter. I had no doubt that he was sitting in the police station in absolute shock, counting down the minutes until his shift ended so he could crack open a cold beer to wash this awful news away.
If Joe felt awful, the Cambridge family felt infinitely worse. The television cut to a shot of Sadie’s parents, Mark and Julie Cambridge, sitting in the courtroom, wrestling with equal parts rage and shock. My heart went out to them, as well as to Sadie’s brother, David, and Sadie’s fiancé, Adam Leary, who were just as appalled by the news.
As a stunning contrast, the television cut to a close-up of Walter Clayton’s face next. He had the expression of a man who couldn’t believe he’d just gotten acquitted. Walter wasn’t alone. There was plenty of disbelief to go around.
I let out a huge groan. “I can’t believe that he just got away with murder.”
By that point, I was so angry at the jury that I wanted to storm over to the courthouse and read them the riot act. The district attorney had laid the case out on a silver platter. According to the prosecutor, last year, on September twenty-fifth, Walter Clayton had gone over to Sadie Cambridge’s house to tell her that he still loved her. According to Walter’s testimony, when he arrived, the house had been broken into and trashed by a burglar. Walter had found Sadie’s dead body on the ground in the kitchen with a gash on the back of her head.
The problem with Walter’s testimony and his insinuation that this was the work of a burglar was the distinct lack of evidence to support his claim. The murder weapon, a frying pan, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints, seemed like an odd instrument for a burglar to use to kill a victim. Wouldn’t a burglar have brought a knife or gun with them?
Also, the fact that the weapon had been left at the scene but had been wiped clean was highly suspicious. Why would the alleged burglar have taken the time to wipe the weapon down but not bring it with them?
Even more suspicious was the fact that nothing had been stolen from Sadie’s house that evening. Both her purse and the cash she had in her wallet remained untouched, as di
d ample jewelry and various antiques that were displayed in the living room. What burglar would break into a house and not take any of that?
In addition, after a thorough investigation, police never found this “phantom” burglar that Walter insisted had committed the crime. The district attorney believed just as I did that Walter and Sadie had gotten into a bitter argument that ended with him killing her. Then, to cover his tracks, he trashed the place in an attempt to make it look like a burglary gone wrong.
To me, his story reeked of a lousy cover-up. Apparently, the jury believed otherwise. Unfortunately, twelve very misguided souls on that jury had just set a killer free. In a short time, Walter would be released and could roam the streets as he pleased. That sickened me.
This was personal to me, mostly because I knew Sadie personally. We’d gone to school together years before. We’d played on the same lacrosse team in high school and had gone to theater camp together. Our friendship had spanned decades. When I moved to California to embark on an acting career, she was the first to wish me luck.
During my time in Tinseltown, we hadn’t kept in as great of contact as I would have liked. So when I moved back to Florida nine months ago and opened my own animal shelter, I was delighted when she was one of the first people to stop by, looking to both adopt a cat and reconnect with me.
After catching up with her at the shelter, I was determined to rekindle our friendship, only for her to be murdered less than two weeks later. It was a devastating turn of events. Now, almost a year later, I still hadn’t fully come to grips with it.
Ever since Walter’s arrest, I’d been waiting for justice to be served. Now it looked like it never would be. That was the hardest pill to swallow.
“A jury of our peers?” I scoffed. “Yeah, right. How could this happen?”
I looked to Daniel for answers, but he had none. He didn’t even have the right words to express his emotions. Not that any words could accurately describe the disbelief. It was written all over his face. Even though we both felt the same way, I felt that venting our frustrations could really help us.
I tried to get a response from him. “Well?”
Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 29
