Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  “Maybe.”

  “Or, that if you were going to break his heart, he’d break your heart by killing the man he thought you were dating.”

  Sophie’s mind was racing. I could see the gears spinning in her head.

  “I wouldn’t rule that out.”

  Finally, I moved on to the third possible suspect. “You said one other name, Henry Mankiewicz. What’s his story?”

  “He felt burned by the fact that Paul picked me for a promotion instead of him. He claimed I’d gotten promoted because of favoritism and not because of merit.” She hesitated. “He was wrong, by the way. I worked my tail off at that job.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. It just matters that Henry thought the promotion was undeserved.”

  “Oh, yeah. He figured that because he had worked there longer, he was a shoe-in for the promotion. In reality, Paul chose me because I had better ideas for the company.”

  “A bitter employee is a fertile ground for a motive,” I said.

  I let it all sink in. There were ample motives to go around. This case was suddenly not nearly as cut and dry as the detective had made it out to be.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “When it comes to proving your innocence, I can’t ever have enough information.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Unfortunately, that’s all I have.”

  “I’ll have to make do with that.”

  “Thanks again for doing this.”

  “Of course. That’s what friends do. Now, it’s time to get to work.”

  “Good luck,” Sophie said.

  I held up my crossed fingers. “I’m going to need it.”

  There was no doubt that I had my work cut out for me, and there was no time for delay. Given that, I got right down to sleuthing.

  Chapter Seven

  My first stop was the scene of the crime, Paul’s house. I was hoping that maybe the police had overlooked a key piece of evidence. It was a long shot, but it was worth taking, mostly because I could use any break I could get.

  As I arrived at Paul’s house, I saw that I wasn’t alone. Unexpectedly, Kaitlin Doherty was laying down flowers at the end of Paul’s driveway like she was creating a makeshift memorial.

  There was a solemn look in her brown eyes. She curled a stray lock of her wavy black hair behind her ear almost like a nervous habit as she breathed a deep sigh. Kaitlin wore a pair of jeans and a red, cardigan sweater, the sleeve of which she used to wipe a tear from her eye. Her athletic body was as tense as could be.

  If she wasn’t a suspect, it would have seemed like a heartfelt gesture. Since she was Paul’s ex-girlfriend, thus giving her a motive for murder, her turning up at the scene was very peculiar. It was possible that she was truly remorseful over Paul’s death. At the same time, it was just as likely that she could have killed him and that she’d come back here because she was paranoid that she’d left a key piece of evidence behind.

  Also, there was the issue of the flowers in her hand. To a casual onlooker, it looked like she was just mourning. To me, they looked like a good prop to use to cover her true intentions of returning to the scene while covering her tracks.

  I made a concerted effort to sneak up on her. Suspects became guarded when they knew they were under the microscope, but if I could use the element of surprise to my advantage, perhaps I could squeeze some information out of her before she realized what was going on.

  Despite my best efforts, Kaitlin caught sight of me out the corner of her eye. So much for that idea. I had to regroup in a hurry. As she turned my way, I was glad I was wearing flats. In prior confrontations with suspects in other cases, I would occasionally come across a runner. Catching up with a suspect while wearing heels was nearly impossible. Flats, on the other hand, made things much easier.

  I was all ready for Kaitlin to take off when she surprised me. Defying all of my expectations, she stayed exactly where she was. By the looks of it, she wasn’t going anywhere. While that was refreshing, especially since I was in no mood to run, it was also perplexing.

  Why didn’t she run? Was it because she had nothing to hide, or because she had nerves of steel? There was only one way to find out.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I was just paying my respects,” Kaitlin replied.

  “Were you two close?”

  I already knew the answer to that but wanted to hear how she’d reply. Would she admit that they used to date, or would she pretend that they were just friends?

  Kaitlin was right up against the yellow police tape but was unfazed by both my question and the fact that she was lingering in front of a crime scene. She didn’t even take one step back.

  If anything, she stepped towards me as she squinted her eyes in my direction. My first question hadn’t troubled her in the least. It was my follow up that drew her scrutiny.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  I had a number of different ways to go with this. I could pretend that I was a friend of Paul’s and told her that I was here to pay my respects as well. That idea seemed dicey. Kaitlin used to date the man. If she saw right through my lie, it would sabotage any future efforts to get information from her.

  My other option was to take the path of heavy resistance. That involved getting creative and flexible with the truth. I didn’t make a regular habit of lying, but in this case, if I was going to get anywhere, that seemed necessary.

  I pulled out a police badge from my purse. Don’t worry. If she read the badge closely, she’d see that it said “Honorary Deputy.” That’s why I flashed it quickly so she wouldn’t give it a deep inspection.

  Back home in Florida, having realized that my sleuthing career was going to continue whether he wanted it to or not, my brother Joe realized it was better to deputize me rather than to have me go rogue and chase down suspects by myself. I always kept the badge on me in case it came in handy. It turned out to be quite fortuitous that I did.

  There was something about the power of the badge. It made much quicker headway than whatever long drawn out explanation I tried to come up with to explain my freelance sleuthing. That was true this time as well. The minute Kaitlin saw the badge, I had her full attention.

  “My name is Hope Hadley. I’m investigating Paul’s murder.”

  Much to my relief, she bought my story. Although, it didn’t quite have the effect that I had intended it to.

  Kaitlin wasn’t tense in the least. That was practically unheard of. For a murder suspect to be so unmoved meant that she either had a killer poker face or had ice water running through her veins. Not only was she not bothered by the badge, but she almost looked relieved to see it.

  “Good. I hope you find out who did this. They deserve to pay for their actions,” Kaitlin said.

  Those were strong words from a murder suspect. Did she not realize she was a suspect? I was perplexed. It was time to clear some things up.

  “I’m planning on making them pay,” I said.

  Once again, she didn’t flinch at my statement. “Good.” She turned to the police tape. “It’s crazy, what happened to Paul. You never think something like this could happen to someone you know. Someone that…”

  Kaitlin trailed off as her tongue became tied.

  I waited to see if she was going to finish her sentence.

  Finally, she got her nerves back and continued. “I just can’t believe this happened. It’s so terrible.”

  I played along. “It really is. Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

  One name immediately came to her mind.

  “Sophie Paulson,” Kaitlin said.

  My stomach sunk.

  I was taken aback. “What?”

  “Sophie Paulson,” she repeated.

  “Why her?”

  “She’s a bad woman.”

  Kaitlin didn’t know that Sophie and I were friends. I had to keep that a secret in order to find out why Kaitli
n disliked her so much.

  “Maybe you’re just saying that because Sophie was dating Paul when you wished that he was still in love with you,” I said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “First of all, because they weren’t dating anymore.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Paul told me. He couldn’t believe how ungrateful she was. Neither can I. After all he did for her, for her to turn around and break his heart like that, it’s unfathomable,” Kaitlin said.

  Kaitlin had it all wrong. She was giving me a completely different story than Sophie had. According to Sophie, Paul was the scumbag. It seemed like, with Kaitlin at least, he had tried to paint himself as a victim. Kaitlin clearly hadn’t heard that Paul had been sleeping around like crazy.

  I wasn’t about to tell her. Right then, there was a more pressing question on my mind. One that seemed especially relevant.

  “When was the last time you talked to Paul?” I asked.

  “Last night,” Kaitlin replied.

  That set off all kinds of red flags in my mind.

  I peppered her with a follow-up. “You talked to him last night?”

  For the first time in our conversation, she tensed up. “Yes. At about seven.”

  How curious? I hadn’t even asked her what time. In addition, she had been very quick to emphasize the word seven. That aroused my suspicion.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a little later? Perhaps at around nine?”

  She corrected me. “No. It was seven.”

  “Where were you last night between and nine and nine-thirty?”

  “I was at home,” Kaitlin said.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Her answers were getting shorter and shorter.

  “So, you have no one to verify your alibi then?” I asked.

  Kaitlin scoffed. “Alibi? What are you talking about?”

  I made myself perfectly clear. “You and Paul used to date.”

  She continued to act like that had no bearing on anything. “So?”

  “So, you two broke up. Do you know how often crimes like this are committed by bitter exes?”

  Kaitlin thought she had an answer to shut me up. “Only, I broke up with him.”

  That wasn’t enough to stop me. “Yes, after you found out he was interested in Sophie Paulson.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

  “I don’t care if you like it.”

  “All that stuff you’re talking about is in the past. I’m completely over Paul.”

  It took all the energy I had not to laugh at the ridiculousness of that statement. “You don’t look like it. As a matter of fact, you seem pretty broken up.”

  I zeroed in on the flowers she was holding.

  Kaitlin had an excuse for that as well. “I’m broken up because he was a friend who was murdered.”

  I pressed on. “You have to admit, it’s pretty curious that you’re lingering at a crime scene.”

  “I told you, I’m here to pay my respects.”

  “That’s your story. Maybe you’re worried that you left something here…incriminating.”

  Kaitlin was outraged at my accusation. “You’re crazy.”

  “Am I?” I asked.

  “I live down the street. When I woke up to take my jog this morning, the police were everywhere. I wanted to see what had happened, and when I did, it broke my heart.”

  Wait a minute. She just lived down the street? That opened up all kinds of possibilities.

  “It’s funny that you mentioned that you live down the street. Since you said you were at home between nine and nine-thirty, that means you were in close proximity to the scene last night. Maybe you came over here, killed Paul, went back to your house, and peered through your front window only to see Sophie show up at Paul’s house shortly after. To cover your tracks, perhaps you put in an anonymous call to the police to frame Sophie for the crime.”

  “You’re just making things up now,” Kaitlin said.

  “Am I? It’s no secret that you hated Sophie. Maybe you killed Paul and set Sophie up to take the fall for you.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “No. That doesn’t make any sense. If I truly hated Sophie so much, why wouldn’t I have just killed her?”

  A theory came to my mind. “I know why you hated Sophie, but perhaps you wanted Paul out of the picture as well. Maybe you couldn’t stand the fact that he didn’t love you like you loved him and you decided that if you couldn’t have him, no one could. So, by killing Paul and framing Sophie, you’d get double the revenge.”

  “You’re nuts,” Kaitlin snapped.

  “Prove me wrong,” I said.

  Instead, Kaitlin backtracked. “I’m out of here.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I have nothing else to say to you.”

  As Kaitlin began walking away, it really put me in a real bind. If I truly was a detective, I could have detained her. Since I was just pretending to be one, there was nothing I could do to force her to stay.

  I tried to egg her on. “What’s the matter? Did I just hit too close to the bone?”

  She didn’t take my bait. “We’re done here.”

  Kaitlin kept walking, leaving me to lick my wounds alone.

  Chapter Eight

  After Kaitlin had walked away, I whirled around to look back at the crime scene. That’s when I saw something out the corner of my eye that caught my interest. It turned out Kaitlin and I hadn’t just been talking alone. There had been an unexpected audience watching us. One house over from Paul’s, I saw a nosy elderly female neighbor peeking through the blinds in her living room.

  I stared directly at her to make it perfectly clear that her presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. The moment she saw me looking her way, she snapped the blinds shut. I don’t know who she thought she was fooling, but it wasn’t me. She also had the wrong idea about the situation.

  Granted, normally I hated prying eyes. In this instance, they could actually work to my advantage. The neighbor had been spying on my conversation, so who was to tell how many other conversations she’d watched through those exact set of blinds? What had her eyes seen? Anything that could be of use to me? I was curious to find out.

  As I walked across the street to pay that nosy neighbor a visit, an interesting theory occurred to me. I had assumed that the anonymous call notifying the police to come to Paul’s house had been placed by one of the other murder suspects. Maybe I had been wrong. Had it been placed by this nosy woman instead? If so, what had she seen? And, almost just as importantly, who had she seen coming and going last night?

  I reached the elderly woman’s door and gave it a few knocks, hoping I didn’t have a struggle on my hands in getting her to answer. It took a few sets of knocks, but she finally did.

  Unfortunately, when she opened up, she squawked at me immediately.

  “What do you want?” Beatrice Turner asked.

  What a rude way to start things off. Beatrice was short, bespectacled, and didn’t look the least bit intimidating. What she lacked in size, she made up for in feistiness. Judging by her response, she was a real live wire.

  “Hi, my name is Hope Hadley,” I said.

  Beatrice remained dismissive of me. “So?”

  “So, I saw you looking over at my conversation with Kaitlin Doherty.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  Really? We were going to play that game? Because she wasn’t going to win that one.

  “Miss, I saw you.”

  She kept up her ruse. “No. I was looking at my rose bushes. I just wanted to see if I have to call my gardener to trim them.”

  This was going nowhere fast. It was time to pull out the heavy artillery. I grabbed the honorary deputy badge from my purse and flashed it quickly.

  “I’m investigating Paul’s murder,” I said.

  Beatrice opened her mou
th to reply. I decided to stop her in case she was about to give me any more malarkey.

  “I need you to be truthful with me,” I added.

  Beatrice became resigned to not being able to brush me off. “What do you want to know?”

  “An anonymous call was placed to 9-1-1 last night telling the police that they’d seen some suspicious activity at Paul’s house. Did you place that call?”

  Beatrice was quick to answer. “No.”

  I tried to get her to put her guard down. “If you did, I assure you, you’re not in any trouble. I’m just looking for some information about the case.”

  “I told you, I didn’t place the call.”

  “Well, if you happen to know who might have, please tell them it’s vital for them to come forward. It could be crucial to solving this case.”

  Beatrice was still very leery of me. “Uh-huh.”

  I had tried things the hard way, with no results. It was time to take a new approach. I tried to butter her up.

  “You look like a very smart woman. Did you happen to see anything last night? Perhaps Kaitlin Doherty coming and going from Paul’s house?”

  That didn’t warm her up to me in the least.

  “No, I didn’t,” Beatrice replied.

  “Did you hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Sorry. I’m afraid I turned in early.”

  “And you slept through the night? No noises woke you up or anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  Yikes. This was like talking to a brick wall. I tried to salvage this questioning so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time.

  “When was the last time you spoke with Paul?” I asked.

  “A few days ago,” Beatrice replied.

  “Did he seemed troubled or mention anyone giving him grief?”

  “No. We just talked about cheesecake.”

  What an odd answer. “Cheesecake?”

  “Yeah. He’d just picked up some cheesecake from the new bakery in town on Maple Street. He said it was to die for.”

  Great, food talk. That’s just what I didn’t need. Now I was getting hungry.

  As for the case, she was giving me nothing. Talking with Beatrice was as bad as questioning a suspect. For a woman who was nosy about getting information, she sure seemed desperate to keep it to herself. Sheesh.