Cozy Suburbs Mystery Box Set

by Lisa B. Thomas

  Guttman’s face remained calm, his eyes fixed on the road. “Or maybe it was you.”

  “Maybe it was. The point is that without a thorough investigation, all you’re left with is speculation.”

  As Guttman turned into the parking lot behind the police station, he let out a sigh. “I’ll be glad to take your confession anytime you want to give it. But if this is all you have to talk about, you really should be getting back home to your husband and dinner.”

  Deena followed him through the back door and down the hall to his office. “Actually, there’s more I want to tell you. It won’t take long.”

  “I hope not. It’s been a long day already.” He unlocked the door to his office and motioned her inside.

  “When I mentioned Reverend Abbott yesterday, I was serious. There’s something fishy going on at the church. Did you know that Darlene Watson keeps allergy shots in her desk drawer?”

  “Do you know that those shots will not kill a person, generally speaking?”

  “Even when combined with alcohol?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “But that’s not all. Reverend Abbott seemed awfully defensive when I asked him about Ray.”

  “That’s not surprising. You’d be defensive, too, if I asked you a lot of questions about someone you knew who just died.”

  Deena clasped her hands together. “I know I’m a rookie when it comes to investigations, but I have developed a pretty good instinct to know when people are lying. Probably from years of working with teenagers. I got the impression he was hiding something. And there’s more.”

  “Why does that not surprise me.” He looked down at his watch.

  Deena was not to be deterred. “I asked Helen Abbott about working at the hospital the night of the carnival, and she squirmed like a worm on a fishing hook. Why? What is she hiding?”

  Guttman steepled his fingers and stared back as though he were contemplating the meaning of life. She wasn’t sure if he was listening or planning his grocery list.

  “Are you listening? Aren’t you even a little curious? You can’t really believe that this investigation is over and that you have a killer in custody.”

  “Mrs. Sharpe, I appreciate your enthusiasm. But seriously, do you really believe your pastor, his wife, and the church secretary all conspired to kill Ray Brewster? Where’s the motive? The man was a sleaze-ball, sure. But if they didn’t want him hanging around, Abbott could have just fired him.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Deena said with a hint of a smile. “Ray was a con man and a blackmailer. We know he had something on Wendy. Suppose he had something on the Abbotts, or Darlene, or the church. Maybe they were cooking the books. Pilfering from the parish. Collecting from the collection tray. Have you thought of that?”

  Guttman shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many crime shows.”

  She stood up for dramatic effect. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure because of the election. But I also know you’re too good a cop not to follow your instincts. At the end of the day, it’s just you and your conscience. What happened to Wendy—being arrested on such circumstantial evidence—would never have happened in a big city. This is small-town politics at its worst. This is bull.”

  With that, Deena turned and walked out the door. Hopefully, Guttman would chew on her words and do something about it. She felt her pulse race and her face blush as she walked out the front door of the police station. Suck on that, she thought.

  The sky had turned from dusk to dark in the short time she had been inside. Moths whirled in the bright lights of the parking lot. Then she remembered something. She had left her car at the courthouse.

  She couldn’t bring herself to go back inside and ask for a ride, so she zipped up the front of her jacket and headed back toward her car. After all, it was only a few blocks. As she hurried along, the darkness seemed to blanket the sky as the stillness of the downtown area at night sent a shiver down her spine. Maybe I’ll just jog.

  She picked up the pace and bounced along down the street. Perfect. I need a little exercise. Soon, her calves began to burn, and she struggled to suck in air. As she approached the corner, tires squealed and headlights blinded her. She jumped up onto the curb as the car sped past. A dog began barking furiously from behind a fence.

  I’m getting out of here. She broke into a dead run. By the time she got to her car, she was breathing so hard, her chest hurt and her ears rung. She bent over beside the car, gasping for breath. I had no idea I was in this bad of shape. She grabbed her sides. Good thing I don’t still have a uterus ’cuz I think it might have just fallen out.

  A clanking noise and a hissing sound startled her. She had dropped her keychain to the ground, and the small vial of pepper spray streamed across the asphalt. She jumped back to get out of the line of fire and pulled her jacket up over her face. Whether real or imagined, she felt tickling in the back of her throat.

  As if dancing around in an empty parking lot trying not to pepper spray herself wasn’t bad enough, a car pulled into the lot and stopped with its lights pointed directly at her. She didn’t dare reach for her keys yet. She started to back away when she heard a familiar voice call out to her. “Mrs. Sharpe? What in the blazes are you doing out here?”

  Oh, great. It was Detective Guttman.

  Chapter 17

  The only time Kristy could squeeze Deena in for a hair appointment was at seven thirty in the morning. Since retiring from teaching, Deena had gotten used to sleeping late. Sylvia, on the other hand, was used to getting up with the cows, so the early morning appointment with one of the new hairdressers was perfect for her.

  “Why not go all the way and get a pedicure while you’re at it?” Deena had asked.

  “The only people who will ever see my bare feet are God and the undertaker. You better make sure I’m buried in my stockings, or I’ll come back to haunt you every day of your life,” Sylvia had said. “Letting a stranger fiddle with your feet? How immodest!”

  Deena had to laugh to herself as she thought about Sylvia’s old-fashioned ways. She was entitled to her opinion, but it was obvious the two women came from different backgrounds and different generations.

  “Hold this for me a minute,” Kristy said, handing a plastic bag to Deena. “Let me just take off these gloves, and I’ll be right back.”

  Kristy had been Deena’s stylist for at least ten years, and they had become close over the years. Not that they did things together, but they shared secrets and details about their lives like old friends who got together every few months. There’s a special relationship between a woman and her hairdresser that men just couldn’t appreciate.

  “Okay.” Kristy took the plastic cap and fitted it over Deena’s head to keep the dye from dripping. “I’m going to set you over here with a magazine while I give Judith a trim.” She leaned in toward Deena’s ear. “If you ask me, she’d do better at finding a man if she’d cover that gray hair, but nobody asks me.”

  Deena sat in a chair near the hair dryers and picked up a magazine. Yawning, she wished now that she’d brought her tumbler of coffee with her. She craned her neck to see how Sylvia was doing. She was smiling and chatting away with Yolanda as if they’d known each other for years.

  A knot formed in Deena’s stomach as she felt a twinge of jealousy. She wished she had a better relationship with her mother-in-law. They had been getting along, but there was always a barrier between them that she couldn’t seem to break through. If only Gary—

  The ringing of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. She fished it out of her purse. No name, but a local number. “Hello?”

  “This is Linus Guttman. I’m in the parking lot next to your car. I need to speak to you right away.”

  “I’ll be right there,” she told the detective. What on earth could he want? She looked around and found a stack of towels on the back counter. She grabbed one and wrapped it turban-style around her head. “I’ll be right back,” she called to Kristy as sh
e pushed open the salon door.

  A cold wind whipped at the vinyl zebra-print drape covering her outfit. She ducked her head and hurried to the car. Guttman motioned for her to get in. She waited for him to speak, but instead, he put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot.

  Deena steadied the towel atop her head. “Where are we going?”

  “Just wait,” he said.

  Did she dare mention her hair-coloring dilemma? She reached for the seatbelt and clicked it closed. Wherever he was taking her, he better make it quick. He pulled onto a side street that led to a rural area of town. Suddenly, Deena felt uneasy. No one knew where she was or who she was with. She patted her pocket and realized she had dropped her phone back into her purse.

  Sure, Guttman was a detective with the Maycroft police force, but how well did she really know him? He had moved there from Philadelphia where he had been fired from their police force. His uncle, the county judge, had pulled strings to get him this job. His intense expression did not do anything to allay Deena’s fears. She was about to say something, when he pulled behind an old barn on a dirt road and parked the car under a clump of overgrown willow trees.

  He unfastened his seatbelt and reached across her to his glove compartment.

  Deena’s hand trembled as she fumbled for her own seatbelt latch.

  When the lid of the glove compartment fell open, she saw the glint of steel and the most ominous-looking revolver she’d ever laid eyes on. She sucked in air and held her breath.

  Guttman reached in and pulled out the gun.

  Every instinct in Deena’s body told her to run, but for the moment, she was paralyzed with fear.

  Guttman then laid the gun on the dashboard and reached back into the glove compartment. He pulled out a stack of folded papers and shoved them toward Deena. “Here, look at these.”

  She let out an audible gasp and breathed rapidly.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you too cold or something?” He reached for the heater dial and twisted it higher.

  “Uh...thanks,” she said, not wanting to let on that she thought she was about to be shot. She opened the papers and looked at them. She’d seen something like this before. “What is this?”

  “Those are copies of the notes that were in Charles Abbott’s file we took from Ray’s house—the ones you saw in his drawer.”

  So that’s where she had seen them. “They look to me like some sort of financial records,” she said.

  “Close. They’re betting sheets. Look at the tops. There’s the name of the track with dates and amounts to bet for each race. It’s the kind of thing you’d give your bookie.”

  “So Ray was gambling away the money Reverend Abbott was paying him to work at the church? What a scumbag.”

  “I’m not so sure. The handwriting doesn’t seem to match other samples we found in Ray’s files.”

  She counted six sheets of paper in all and looked at the dates. “These are from the beginning of the year. Looks like the first two weeks of January. Didn’t Ray start working at the church around that time?”

  “That’s right.”

  She folded the papers and handed them back to Guttman. “Why are you showing me these?”

  He blew out a long breath as though he were about to give a speech. “You’re right. This was a bad arrest. You already know the pressure I’m under to have a suspect in custody until after Tuesday’s election. It’s the kind of small-town politics that gives law enforcement a bad name.”

  “I know what you mean. So why don’t you just expose it for what it is and let Mayor Thornhill take the fall?”

  “I wish I could,” Guttman said, rubbing his forehead. “But I need this job. I’ve been run off once for not being a team player, and I can’t afford to have it happen again.”

  Deena thought for a minute. It reminded her of the inter-office politics she used to have to deal with at school. “So, you don’t believe Wendy is guilty?”

  “I’m not saying that. I have a pretty strong witness who heard Wendy Fairmont threaten Ray. But what I’m saying is that we don’t have enough on her yet. Also, there are others we need to check out.” He twisted his body to face her directly. “That’s where you come in. I can’t have my guys come anywhere near this. That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He handed her back the papers. “Take these to Abbott and see what you can find out about them. Something tells me that they could be the key to what happened to Ray.”

  “Do you think Reverend Abbott is a killer?”

  “No. He has a rock-solid alibi. He was out fishing with a church buddy all day before the carnival. But I think you are on to something. These gambling records were important enough for Ray to file, and we need to know why.”

  “Maybe he was borrowing money from Reverend Abbott.”

  “Maybe. We also need to know where his wife really was that night. What happened to the missing allergy shot. Like you said, Helen Abbott is a nurse and would have access to all kinds of syringes and medical supplies. If she wasn’t at the carnival and she wasn’t at the hospital, where was she?”

  Deena felt a strange sensation come over her. It was like she was looking at a photograph of herself. In the photo, she was wearing a beige trench coat and a dark scarf over her head and big sunglasses. She was working undercover for the CIA. She was a spy—a genuine, real-life secret agent.

  “If I agree to do this, I want one thing in return.”

  Guttman didn’t look like a man willing to compromise. “What?”

  “Who is your witness that heard Wendy threaten Ray?”

  Guttman adjusted the rearview mirror.

  Deena assumed he was buying time. Contemplating his response.

  Finally, he gave in. “It probably won’t hurt to tell you. It will come out soon enough anyway.”

  Deena sucked in a breath and held it.

  “Stephanie Gander. But you can’t say you heard it from me.”

  “Stephanie? Maybe that’s why she screamed and ran off when she saw Ray’s body at the haunted house.”

  Pulling back the cape draped across her lap, Deena shoved the papers into the pocket of her slacks. Then she remembered her hair. “Is there anything else I should know? I really need to get back to the salon.”

  Guttman drove back in silence as Deena tried to sort out her next move.

  She was about to get out of the car when Guttman put his hand on her arm. “One more thing,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone about our arrangement. It has to look like part of your investigation to clear your client.”

  “It is, actually.”

  “I mean it, Deena. Tell no one. Not your boss or your husband. You have my cell number if you need to get in touch.”

  Deena nodded and hurried back into the salon.

  Sylvia was seated in the waiting area with a stack of magazines in her lap. “Where on earth have you been?” she demanded, glaring at Deena.

  “I had to run an errand.”

  Kristy walked up, shaking her head. “Let’s get you rinsed before you catch your death of cold.”

  The warm water felt soothing to Deena’s now-burning scalp.

  “Oh my,” Kristy said as she ran her fingers through Deena’s hair. “I hope whatever you went to do was important, because you’re going to have a big reminder of it for a while.”

  “Is it that bad?” Deena asked as she sat up from the sink.

  “Not if you wear a scarf—and a hat.”

  Deena stood up to peek in the wall mirror. There she was staring back at herself with jet-black hair. “What can we do about it?”

  “Nothing for at least a week. Try washing it with laundry detergent. Hopefully, it won’t turn purple.” Kristy led her back to her station to blow-dry the black mop. “At least we covered the gray,” she laughed. She leaned down and whispered in Deena’s ear, “Next week when you come back, I expect you to tell me all about it.”

  Deena nodde
d. By that time, every one in town should know about it. She’d either have brought a killer to justice, or she’d be looking for a new church home.

  Chapter 18

  Even though she was moving as slow as a snail, Sylvia had the fastest mouth in the South. Before Deena could even make it home, Gary was calling to ask her what the heck happened. Good thing Sylvia still had a flip phone or she probably would’ve sent him a picture of Deena’s hair. Deena hated to lie to her husband, but she didn’t know if he would accept her explanation that it was “confidential.”

  As if she hadn’t burned enough bridges with Sylvia, she had to break it to her that she would be out most of the afternoon. Sylvia didn’t say much but insisted Deena have a sandwich for lunch before traipsing off on another of her exploits.

  Deena fixed tuna on whole wheat and opened a bag of chips on the kitchen table. She poured two glasses of sweet tea and opened the newspaper to look occupied.

  Sylvia remained quiet while they ate, which wasn’t a good sign. Anytime she got quiet, it could only mean trouble was brewing. Just as well, since Deena didn’t want to have to explain herself again. Finally, Sylvia spoke. What she said took Deena off guard. “You know, I can be pretty sneaky myself when I want to.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay...that’s good to know.” Deena looked back at the newspaper.

  “What I mean is, maybe I could be of help in your investigation.”

  Deena nearly choked on an ice cube.

  “I’m serious. If it hadn’t been for me, you might not have solved that last case, if you remember. I could be the lookout and create a diversion—whatever you need.”

  Like Deena, Sylvia loved a good mystery story. She was a voracious reader, preferring classics like Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.

  “But your foot,” Deena said. “Shouldn’t you rest it?”

  “I’m sick of resting. I can rest when I’m dead. It’s hard being stuck here in the house when you are off fighting crime. Take me with you. You won’t regret it.”