Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  By the time morning rolled in, I’d worked myself into a tizzy. I purposefully avoided opening the Internet and didn’t turn on the television for fear of being bombarded with news stories about the case. Deep down, I knew that was a temporary fix. With a story this big, I’d have to walk around with blinders over my eyes and construction-worker headphones over my ears to truly avoid any mention of this case.

  Murders were a rare occurrence in Hollywood. That was one of the reasons I felt so safe and comfortable living here. The problem was, when a violent crime like this did occur, it gripped the whole town in its clutches and didn’t let them come up for air. This case would be on the tips of everyone’s tongues for weeks, if not months, to come.

  So, while electronic devices could be avoided, gossip from the residents of Hollywood could not. With previous investigations, gossip about the case had actually become a more popular topic than the weather, and in Florida, where Mother Nature operated with fiery mood swings that often turned on a dime, that was saying a lot.

  After finishing off a cup of coffee to shake off the lingering grogginess of an incomplete night of sleep, it became clear that keeping my distance from this case may have been nothing more than wishful thinking.

  There was one way to get the answers I was looking for. That’s how I found myself at Home Sweet Home Cooking, joining Joe for his usual bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast breakfast. He was the kind of man that restaurants were designed for. To say he was a regular was the ultimate understatement. I was surprised he didn’t have a menu item named after him yet. Or a plaque on the wall with his picture on it with a caption reading “Thanks for keeping us in business.”

  I didn’t blame him. He knew his strengths, and cooking wasn’t one of them. I think he still kept the fire department on speed dial after his last battle with his stove. He’d lost that fight after making a charred casualty of an innocent piece of chicken. These days, he only ventured into his kitchen to grab a cold can of beer and had adopted a very simple cooking philosophy—the best meal was one that was cooked by someone else.

  As I joined him at his customary booth, he was savoring the last crispy slice of bacon on his plate. My taste buds were jealous. I wanted nothing more than to poach that slice from him but had to find some restraint. I wasn’t there to place a side order of bacon envy.

  “You can’t go wrong with bacon, can you?” he said.

  “Until you run out of it,” I replied.

  That was probably not the best comment to make just as he finished crunching down on his last slice. He finished chewing, then ran his hand over his belly.

  “My belt probably wouldn’t approve of me ordering seconds, would it?”

  I snickered at him. “Save some for the rest of us.”

  “Hey, I’ll be a hog if I want to. By the way, did you hear they’re turning the vacant space that used to be Thompson’s Bistro into a new donut shop?”

  This was quickly devolving into torture for my taste buds. I was only human. I could only resist so much before giving in to delicious temptation. At the same time, I couldn’t help but laugh at the cliché that was a cop swooning over the future opening of a donut shop.

  I tried my best not to laugh but failed miserably.

  When Joe saw me chuckling, he became self-conscious. “What are you laughing at?”

  I feared that the truth would only send us down an argumentative path, so I shook my head and deflected. “I just don’t know how you keep the pounds off as well as you do.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “The job keeps me active.”

  That was the perfect transition to steer the conversation away from food. “Speaking of, are you not going to tell me about how the case is going?”

  His face stiffened. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  I shot him an offended look.

  He shrugged it off. “You were the one who told me you didn’t want anything to do with this case.”

  Touché. There was no better argument than having my own words used against me.

  I rolled back my previous statement. “Color me curious.”

  Joe wanted me to eat a little bit of crow first. “What about that thing you said about justice having been done already?”

  Grrr. He was really making me work for this—a little too much. Was this information really worth jumping through hoops for?

  In my frustration, I put up the white flag. “Forget I even asked.”

  Seeing that there was no more fun to be had in toying with me, he finally gave in. “That’s a shame. I’m close to getting some real justice here.”

  My eyes darted open wide. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I think I’m closing in on the killer.”

  “Who?”

  I had gotten a little too excitable for his tastes. He tried to temper my enthusiasm.

  “Look, it’s just a hunch right now, but I feel good about it. Now I just need to find enough evidence to back it up.”

  There was a lot of preface there but no meat for me to chew on. “Who are we talking about again?”

  “Adam Leary.”

  The name came off of Joe’s lips like a bombshell dropped in slow motion. In all my worries about the Cambridges, I’d forgotten about Adam. Clearly, I shouldn’t have been so myopic, as this news shook me like an earthquake. I thought when I left California, I wouldn’t ever be shaken like that again. I was wrong.

  “Sadie’s fiancé?” I shook my head. “No. I can’t believe it.”

  “The truth doesn’t care if you believe it. Believe it or not, Adam Leary has become the prime suspect in this case.”

  Those words sounded so wrong coming off of Joe’s tongue. Adam had always been a sweet man. Not to mention completely devoted to Sadie. In a relationship, that was an admirable thing. Perhaps in this circumstance, his devotion was his downfall. Sadie was the love of his life. Losing her was bad enough. Was seeing her killer walk free too much for him to stomach?

  The motive lined up. As much as I hated to admit it, there was no denying that he had a killer reason to want Walter Clayton dead. At the same time, the thought of Adam being a murderer twisted my stomach into knots.

  It made me feel queasy even thinking about it. Although, unlike my usual gut instincts, it wasn’t because I felt like my brother was wrong. I had no investigative evidence to refute Joe’s theory. This was just a purely emotional reaction.

  When my mind wandered to the nitty gritty of the case, my opinions were less visceral. Sure, the motive was there, but I knew just as well as any sleuth that a suspect couldn’t be convicted on motive alone. Means and opportunity were sometimes even more important. Did Adam Leary have both of those working against him as well?

  I might have answered my own question. Clearly, either the means or the opportunity was somewhat murky. Otherwise, my brother would have already put Adam behind bars. The question became, how murky? Just as I was trying to come to grips with the news, life unexpectedly shook the ground beneath our feet again.

  Before I had the chance to ask him about it, this emotional earthquake sent an aftershock rippling through the conversation. Only instead of being minor and without sizable damage, like most aftershocks were, this one came in the form of a tectonic shift.

  It began with a call coming over Joe’s police radio.

  “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 be 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 doe
sn’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.