Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  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 knew 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.”

  “Your father really was willing to do anything for you.” I finally had one part of the equation figured out. There was still another key component to this. “Now, about Walter—”

  David cut me off. “That was an accident.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Really, an accident?”

  He nodded. “After his acquittal, I couldn’t stand the idea of him walking
around town freely. It made me angry to no end that he’d be able to just move on with his life, while the rest of us would be struggling to pick up the pieces. I went over to Walter’s house that night to talk him into leaving town. Even though I’d never truly be able to get over the fact that he’d been acquitted, I figured that if he moved away from Hollywood, maybe having him out of sight might be able to take him out of my family’s minds, even if just a little.”

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  “He said he wasn’t going anywhere. I tried reasoning with him, but he just wouldn’t listen. Instead, he just got angrier and angrier, then told me he still had some unfinished business in this town.”

  “What kind of unfinished business?”

  “He told me that he wanted to see my family suffer. As if we hadn’t already suffered enough, right?” David started getting choked up. “Apparently, he blamed me and my parents for Sadie breaking up with him. Walter said that we poisoned the well and had convinced her that he was the wrong guy for her.”

  “How did you respond?”

  “I said, can you really blame us? I mean, you were crazy enough to kill her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Realizing that I was getting nowhere, I turned around to leave. That’s when he came at me from behind. He pushed me against the wall and tried to choke me, but I fought back and ended up choking him to death in self-defense. You see, I had no choice. It was either him or me, and I wasn’t about to let him get the better of me,” David explained.

  It was an elaborate story. One that seemed too detailed to make up on the spot. The look in his eyes seemed genuine, but my suspicions remained.

  As much as I wanted to believe David, one part of his story didn’t add up. “If you killed him in self-defense, why didn’t you tell the police that? You could have avoided all of this.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, right. Like they’d believe me. When I just told you this was an accident, you didn’t even believe me. I was at Walter’s house hours after he’d gotten acquitted on charges of killing my sister. If the police found that out, they would have thrown me in jail immediately, regardless of the truth, and you know it.”

  I had a hard time arguing with that. As I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see any wavering. I believed he was telling the truth, that he’d acted in self-defense.

  He continued. “Face it, if you look guilty, people think you are guilty.”

  “You saw that, but that wasn’t the truth with Walter Clayton when it came to that jury. And he was guilty. You’re innocent. Tell the truth and trust the jury to make the right decision this time.”

  He argued with me. “I can’t.”

  I stared him down. “You have to. Your father’s life depends on it.”

  David took my words to heart and grew quiet. As much as he hated to admit it, it became clear to him what he had to do.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After some hemming and hawing, David eventually turned himself in to the police and confessed to killing Walter Clayton. With David’s confession, Mark Cambridge was released from prison. Unfortunately, the troubles were far from over for the Cambridge family. While David pleaded self-defense in killing Walter, the district attorney disagreed with David’s story and filed murder charges against him.

  Like the Walter Clayton case that had come before it, suddenly the David Cambridge case became the only thing the residents of Hollywood talked about. The trial was locally televised, and I watched every second of it, hoping that justice would be done.

  For five painstaking days, David’s attorney laid out his defense. Finally, on the sixth day, after two hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict.

  I waited impatiently as the foreman stood up in the jury box, holding David’s fate in his hands. As the foreman turned to the judge, I said a quick prayer to God, hoping to hear a not-guilty verdict.

  I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. David’s entire life rested on the words that were about to come out of that foreman’s mouth. I knew what the verdict should have been. But, if juries had proven anything, it was how unpredictable they could be.

  Finally, the wait was over. As I watched the television intently, the foreman opened his mouth and said eight of the sweetest words I’d ever heard in my entire life.

  “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

  The End.

  Murder Of A Restaurant Critic

  Prologue

  My pulse pounded as the car accelerated to eighty miles per hour. I looked over at my brother, Joe Hadley, to see if he was sweating, but he looked as calm as could be. Granted, he was a police detective with training for this sort of thing, but his cool under pressure was still enviable. I could not say the same for myself. While Joe was focused on chasing the murder suspect who was trying to break away from us, I was moments away from a full-blown panic attack.

  How did things come to this—a dangerous car chase at absurdly high speeds? Suddenly, I found myself entertaining thoughts that had never occurred to me before. Things like, how good were the airbags in this car? Would my seat belt really be able to hold me back in the case of a collision? Would my body crumple up like an accordion on impact, or would I be able to walk away from this with only minor scrapes and bruises?

  If I wasn’t careful, my thoughts could turn into nothing more than a minefield. I tried not to let fear get the best of me. That was a more difficult struggle than I had anticipated.

  Once again, I turned my attention to Joe, wondering how he could be so calm at a time like this. Then again, I wouldn’t have wanted him to be any other way, especially since he was the one behind the wheel. His eyes were only focused on one thing—the evergreen-colored sedan that was in front of us.

  Car chases were the kind of things that were always so entertaining to watch on television from the comfort of my living room, but terrifying to be in the thick of. During my years in Los Angeles, I had seen a lot of high-speed chases, as L.A. was sort of the unofficial car-chase capital of the world. Conversely, I could count on one finger the number of times a car chase had occurred in this corner of Florida. I was quite thankful for that. Unfortunately, I had a passenger seat for that one and only car chase.

  In addition, right then, I didn’t have time to count—my fingers were bracing myself in case impact was imminent. In person, these high-speed pursuits were nail-biting affairs. I felt like I could die at any moment. All it would take was one wrong move by either Joe or the suspect in front of us, and it could lead to a disastrous crash.

  Things had started simply enough. After questioning this suspect, Joe had assigned a patrol car to tail their every move, in case they tried to leave town. It was fairly standard procedure. In this case, it also happened to be necessary. A few hours after we’d finished questioning the suspect, they made a break for it, desperate to bolt out of town.

  Joe’s deputy had notified us of the suspect’s departure, and we sped across town to join the chase. Thanks to some unexpected traffic leaving town, the suspect was slowed down, allowing Joe to take a shortcut to catch up with them. Now, we were hot on the suspect’s tail burning down the highway on the outskirts of town, waiting for the suspect to slip up.

  As we looked ahead on the highway, traffic appeared to be intervening. There seemed to be a slowing of traffic in front of us. The closer we got, the more I realized why. There was an overturned big rig taking up two of the three lanes on the westbound side of the highway. All the traffic in front of us was being funneled into one lane while a crew cleaned up the mess associated with the big rig accident.

  Normally, this would be a good thing for us. With traffic slowing down, logically, the suspect would have to slow down as well, right? Only, the suspect kept gunning it.

  Suddenly, we were hurtling full speed ahead towards a worst-case scenario. Didn’t the suspect see the traffic slowing down right in front of us? Or did they not care?

  To Joe and myself, this was a grave concern.
We didn’t want casualties at a time like this. Joe’s job was to protect and serve the public at all costs. Unfortunately, it looked like a grim end to this situation was inevitable.

  The suspect kept approaching the traffic snag at full speed, almost destined to plow into the bumper of one of the cars in front of him. I prayed for the suspect to slow down and stop this madness. That prayer wasn’t answered.

  The suspect had other ideas. They made a slight turn to the right at the last moment, swung onto the shoulder of the highway, and kept driving.

  Joe followed behind them. How long could the suspect keep this up? Did they really think they could drive all the way down the shoulder to get beyond this traffic snag?

  I got my answer in short order. A few seconds later, the suspect made a wild turn to the right, following the highway exit, narrowly missing a number of cars as they drove on the shoulder of the off-ramp.

  Joe followed suit and was barely able to keep from hitting the cars as well. Somehow, he managed to just make it.

  I took a deep breath. Phew. That was close. Too close.

  If there was one bright spot in all of this, it was that at least we were off the highway now. As a benefit, this particular exit was in a sparsely populated area. There were more trees out here than people. Conversely, it meant that the suspect had more open space to work with. That could make it much harder to bring this chase to an end.

  That’s when it happened. Just as my worries reached an all-new high, the suspect suddenly made a decision that altered the dynamics of this chase. Before I knew it, everything changed in the blink of an eye, and I realized that things would never be the same.

  Chapter One

  One Day Earlier

  “Are you all right?” Daniel Jacobsen asked.

  It was turning into an odd evening. Things had started off well enough. My boyfriend had taken me to Romancing Jane Burroughs, a new romantic comedy movie that I absolutely loved. In my mind, they couldn’t make enough chick flicks. Unfortunately, Hollywood seemed to be producing less of them than ever these days. What a shame. But the paucity of new romantic comedies coming down the pipeline made seeing a good one even more satisfying.