Cozy Suburbs Mystery Box Set

by Lisa B. Thomas

Deena stood and threw her arms around Betty. She could feel the woman tense up, but Deena didn’t care. She squeezed even harder. “Thank you. You saved my life.”

  Betty wrangled herself free. “I can’t believe this happened. Who would want to kill you?”

  “That’s the million dollar question,” Gary said. “Hopefully, the police can find out.”

  Deena sat back down and put her hand on Gary’s leg. It was comforting to have him near her, like her own private security blanket. “It has to be related to the Dekker case, don’t you think?”

  Betty just stared and shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  Nancy opened the door for Sergeant Nelson.

  As usual, the look on her face was blank, a real asset for a law enforcement officer. “We ran the plates on the two cars. One is registered to Phillip Donaldson.”

  “That’s my husband,” Betty said. “What’s this about?”

  “The other is a rental car. According to the car company, it was rented by Max Dekker.”

  Chapter 18

  Anger still clouded her thoughts when she woke up Tuesday to say good-bye to Gary. She had to “cross her heart and hope to die” before she could get him to let her stay alone at the house. Of course with no car, there wasn’t much she could do anyway.

  She had lain awake for at least an hour the night before wondering who could have wanted her dead. Sure, she had ruffled some feathers in town in the past but not enough to warrant this kind of revenge. Besides, the timing was too coincidental. It simply had to be related to the Dekker case.

  Max Dekker. If the police thought he killed his wife, maybe they would find evidence that he tried to kill her, too. But why would he? He went out of his way to thank her. That didn’t seem like the action of a killer. Plus, it probably happened at the library. Wouldn’t that be too obvious if he were already under suspicion? In her opinion, Max was innocent on both counts. Still, she couldn’t dismiss the fact that he had the means and opportunity to do it.

  Another thought crossed her mind. Maybe she and Alexis Dekker had been random victims of a serial killer. The thought made her stomach turn. Which was worse: being someone’s specific target or having a madman on the loose in their small, cozy community?

  She stared at the ceiling wondering what she should do. She would call Russell later. It would upset him if he heard about her situation secondhand. News traveled faster than a roadrunner in Maycroft.

  She remembered that Dan’s article about Max Dekker’s arrest would be in today’s newspaper. She hopped out of bed and hurried to the front door and grabbed the newspaper off the front porch. The Northeast Texas Tribune had recently increased their circulation to five days a week. They didn’t publish on Saturday and Sunday since so many people in their region got their weekend news from the Dallas newspaper.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, still warm from Gary’s morning brew and sat at the kitchen table. The headline read: “Local Author Arrested for Murder.” Apparently, Dan had a late night revising the headline and updating the story to make today’s edition.

  She read the article carefully, seeing if there were any new details. Guttman was quoted as saying he wouldn’t release any new information until the suspect had retained counsel. Ian had told her there had been a new development. She was hoping something in the article explained why the evidence pointed to Max Dekker and not Joseph Ramos.

  Interesting. Who would Max get to represent him? Surely not anyone from around here. He likely had a bevy of lawyers on retainer in New York.

  The bing-bong of the doorbell made her jump, causing Hurley to go into a barking frenzy. She glanced out the front window but didn’t see a car. She looked through the peephole expecting to see a neighbor—just not this one.

  “Mr. Cooper.” Luckily, she caught herself before calling him Mr. Creeper. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s not what you can do for me; it’s what I can do for you.”

  Ugh. The last thing she needed was for Peeping Tom to paraphrase JFK. She stepped out onto the porch to keep from inviting him inside. Her foot still throbbed. She folded her arms and stared.

  “You see, I keep my eye on the neighborhood.”

  Duh. We see you staring at us through the fence all the time.

  “I’m not officially a member of the Neighborhood Watch, but I do what I can to keep our neighborhood safe.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, for the past few days, I noticed a strange car driving slowly down our street. I wouldn’t have thought much about it, except it seemed to slow down in front of your house.”

  Goosebumps rose up on her arms. “What did it look like? Did you see the driver?”

  “No, no. It was always dark. I didn’t see the driver. Whenever I went to get my binoculars—let’s just say it was too far away.”

  “But you saw the car. What did it look like?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have this conversation inside? I have a pot of coffee ready at the house.”

  “No, thanks. But this is important. Can you tell me about the car?”

  “Very well, then. It was white. A four-door sedan. Nothing special or unusual about it.”

  “And you said you saw it drive past after dark? Did you see it last night?”

  “No, not since Sunday. But since this whole murder business has popped up, I thought you could never be too safe. A pretty woman like you needs to—”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cooper. I need to make a few calls. Nice seeing you.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door. Hurley looked up with his brown eyes asking for an update. “Nobody special,” she said, and he trotted back into the den.

  Who should she call first? Gary or Guttman? Maybe Sergeant Nelson. She decided against calling Gary since the information was non-specific. He would be surprised, though, to learn that Edwin Cooper had had the nerve to come to their front door.

  She decided to call Sergeant Nelson. Deena knew her and trusted her more than Guttman. Plus, she and Gary had talked to her previously about their creepy neighbor. She would know who he was.

  The receptionist put Deena’s call right through. She quickly explained the information she had received from Edwin Cooper. What Sergeant Nelson said next was a complete surprise. She hung up the phone after agreeing to come down to the station to make a statement. They were sending a squad car to pick her up.

  Should she call Ian? Did she need her attorney to go with her? As she walked in a daze back to the bedroom to get dressed, she repeated the sergeant’s words in her head. Your case has been turned over to Detective Guttman as part of the Dekker investigation.

  Chapter 19

  “Thanks for coming down, Mrs. Sharpe.” Detective Guttman’s tie was loose, and his suit looked like he’d slept in it. “I need to ask you a few questions about last night.” He fumbled with a stack of folders on his desk.

  Deena wriggled in the faux leather chair across from him. She looked down at her feet and noticed she was wearing two different shoes. Both were ballet flats, but one was black and the other was navy blue. This wasn’t the first time she’d left the house with mismatched shoes. It was more common, though, back in her teaching days. She couldn’t believe how much her life had changed in just a year.

  “Tell me when you first noticed brake fluid under your car?”

  “It was at the library last night. Actually, my friend Betty noticed it.”

  “Where had your car been parked prior to that?”

  “In my garage. In case you’re wondering, my husband checked the floor of the garage and driveway. There was no fluid in either place.”

  He made a note. “When did you first notice a white car following you? Sergeant Nelson reported that you stated it was a Ford sedan. Do you know the model?”

  “No. They all look about the same to me. It seems like the first time I saw it was when I was here talking to you on Saturday. It was parked in the back of the lot. Someone was sitting in it, but I couldn’t see who
it was.”

  Guttman made a note. “I’ll get security to check out the video and see if they can get a plate number. When else?”

  “I saw it again on Sunday driving back from the Pit Stop Café out on the highway.”

  “Are you sure it was the same car? White Fords are pretty common.”

  “Obviously, I can’t be sure, but my gut told me it was. People say I have pretty good instincts about this sort of thing.”

  “Like how you thought Max Dekker was innocent of murder?”

  Ouch. “Low blow. I don’t have all the evidence you guys have. I still find it hard to believe he killed his wife. And what about Joseph Ramos?

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. Back to the car.”

  “I saw it again on Monday and tried to follow it. Unfortunately, it got away.”

  “You still didn’t see the driver or model?”

  “Nope.” She looked down at her shoes. So much for her attention to detail. “Oh, I remember something else. Last week when I was leaving Ian Davis’s office to come here, I heard a car speed off. I didn’t see it, but it seemed suspicious.”

  Guttman looked at his notes. “That would have been on Wednesday, correct?”

  “Yes. Why does all this matter? Do you think Max Dekker was following me and tried to kill me?”

  Guttman closed the folder and laid his hands on the desk. “I’m going to tell you something in confidence. Sergeant Nelson said you helped out on a previous case and could be trusted.”

  Deena’s heart beat a little faster. “I can be.” She stopped herself from making the pinky swear she used to do with Russell.

  “As you may know, sometimes law enforcement will keep some details of a crime out of the news as a strategic move. We did that in this case.”

  Deena slid forward on her seat.

  “Melissa Engels, the hairdresser at the beauty shop, reported seeing a white Ford in the parking lot while Mrs. Dekker was there. It was before Cliff Abel showed up with the cooler.”

  Deena’s mind traveled back to that day. “Could it have belonged to the man who helped Cliff?”

  “Mr. Pratt? No. We checked him out.”

  “Maybe Max Dekker just stopped by to say hello before going to the library.”

  “Melissa said he did not come in.”

  “Is that why Melissa took off?”

  “She was afraid someone would think she was a snitch. Apparently, she had had some trouble in the past and didn’t want to get involved. We are trying to track her down so that she can testify for us at trial.”

  Deena sat back and fiddled with her purse. “Did you know that he had rented the Ford?”

  “Yes. He got it for his wife to drive a few weeks back since they only had one car when they moved here. Apparently, though, she preferred his car. You see, we have been following a lot of different leads, but Max Dekker has been our prime suspect all along.”

  Deena could feel her muscles tense. “So what was his motive for following me and then trying to kill me?”

  “This is only speculation, of course, but you saw him with his ex-wife the day after the murder. You brought your evidence to the police. You continued trying to help clear Cliff Abel of the crime. In short, you were getting in the way of finding another suspect.”

  “So what about Joseph Ramos? He was here in town for the memorial. That’s a fact. Did he have an alibi for the time of the murder?”

  “Yes. Not as solid as we had hoped, but we are still investigating it.”

  Deena didn’t want to accept the fact that Max was guilty. She took one last stab at it. “Have you considered that there could be a serial killer on the loose cutting random people’s brake lines?”

  Guttman leaned back in his chair. “Mrs. Sharpe, there’s more. I’m sure Ian Davis told you about the handkerchief.”

  “What? No.”

  “Mr. Davis said you found a greasy handkerchief among Mrs. Dekker’s clothes at the thrift shop. When his wife, Sandra, told him about it, he called me. I had it tested. Yesterday it came back positive for brake fluid.”

  Deena put her hand to her mouth as she gasped. That must have been the new information Ian had mentioned to her.

  “Mrs. Sharpe, you’re a bright woman. Didn’t you find it strange that Mr. Dekker would donate a box of his wife’s clothes to the thrift shop so soon after his wife’s death? He probably didn’t realize her name was sewn into some of the garments.”

  “But this is all circumstantial evidence.”

  “True, but the District Attorney thought it was enough for a trial.”

  “I can’t believe it. I mean, I can—but I can’t.”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes good people do bad things.”

  Deena sat back in her chair. “So you really think he tried to kill me, too?”

  “There’s one more piece of evidence we have found so far. Last night when we took Mr. Dekker into custody, we found another greasy handkerchief in his briefcase. It’s at the lab. We expect it to come back positive for brake fluid.”

  Deena’s cell phone rang. She answered it without thinking. The man on the other end of the line sounded nervous. When he said his name, Deena recognized it as belonging to a senior partner of the law firm of Lyons and Sons. “My client, Max Dekker, would very much like to speak to you,” he said.

  “Me?” She was shocked.

  “Yes. He is currently being held in the Perry County Jail and is not scheduled to be released until later this evening. If you could go over there, we would greatly appreciate it.”

  Deena was conflicted, but her curiosity won out. “I’ll be there shortly.” She looked at the detective. “Seems that Max Dekker wants to talk to me.”

  Guttman tilted his head. “Interesting. That’s your choice, of course, but realize that everything you say will be recorded.”

  “I know. Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Not at all. I trust you not to bring up Melissa Engels’s testimony about seeing his car.”

  “A car,” she said. “We don’t know yet if it is his. What about the other evidence? Does he know about it? Can I question him about that?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve already interviewed him about the other information. I’m not expecting a jailhouse confession, but maybe his explanation will help our case. Especially if he changes his story down the road.”

  “Have you finished with my car?”

  “Ah, yes. That’s another matter I wanted to ask you about.” He flipped through a few pages in the folder. “Were you aware that there was a GPS tracking device mounted to the underside of your car?”

  THERE WAS NO GETTING around it. Reality hit her like a Mack truck. It hadn’t been her imagination. She wasn’t the victim of a random act of violence. Someone had targeted her and wanted her dead, and the most likely suspect was Max Dekker. That realization made her head spin and her stomach lurch.

  She wasn’t used to the feeling of having enemies. Sure, she had been in danger before—usually as a result of getting herself in a pickle.

  Thank goodness for Betty or else she would have been the next headline in the newspaper. She tried to shake the maudlin thoughts from her head and looked around to see if anyone had been reading her mind. The other patrons in the reception area of the police station were either glued to their cell phones or staring helplessly into space.

  Where were they with her car? This was worse than waiting for her name to be called at the DMV. Worse than waiting for the lines to move at the bank’s drive-through. Worse than waiting for the biopsy results from her doctor.

  Actually, that had been worse. A lot worse. Focus.

  What would she say to Max Dekker when she got over to the jail? He had scheduled the meeting, so she should let him do all the talking. Would he deny everything? Probably. Would she believe him? Why should she?

  A man wearing a brown jumpsuit walked into the waiting area holding a clipboard. “Deena Sharpe,” he called out.

  “Here,” she
said and stood.

  He walked up and shoved a pen at her. “Sign here for your car. We’ll send you a bill for fixing your brake line.”

  She obeyed and took her car keys from him. “Super.”

  Walking out to her car, she squeezed the keychain like a talisman. She relished the familiarity and comfort it gave her by just holding it in her hand. Once inside her car, she let out a deep sigh. She felt safe.

  The sun’s rays pouring through the glass illuminated a spot on the steering wheel. A smudge of fingerprint powder missed in the clean up stared back at her, a stark reminder that things were not exactly as they were before. Perhaps they never would be. She shuddered as if a cold wind had passed through her. This must have been what experts called “victim mentality.”

  She refused to give in to that kind of thinking. It wasn’t as if the whole world was after her; it was just one person. As long as he was locked up, she would be safe. She started the engine, and the air conditioning blew dust all around. She imagined the specs to be tiny angels watching over her.

  Pulling out of the parking lot and turning toward the jail, she knew one question she would be asking Max Dekker for sure. Why did you want to kill me?

  Chapter 20

  The room where inmates spoke with visitors looked like something out of a 1990s crime drama. Maycroft hadn’t updated to a video monitor system of communicating with visitors. All three of the visitor cubicles were filled.

  There was another woman waiting along with her. She was middle-aged and busied herself with knitting. She must be a regular. Was she there to see her child or husband? Maybe it was her brother. Had her brother gotten caught writing bad checks? Maybe it was a DUI. He could be an alcoholic. Or on drugs.

  An officer appeared and called the woman’s name. She smiled and made her way to the now-open cubicle. Deena leaned over to try to see who the woman was talking to. She leaned out a little too far and the folding chair skidded out from under her, causing her to crash onto the hard linoleum floor. Everyone turned to look as she quickly picked herself up and righted the chair. She scooped up the contents of her handbag.