“Life doesn’t like making things easy for me,” Meg replied. She tried to look on the bright side. “At least I have some leads to work with.”
“Yeah, the craziest kind of leads. All of his family members.”
“The truth may be ugly, but it’s still my job to find it.”
“Let’s hope it’s not as ugly as it seems.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Meg said.
Chapter Six
Rarely had a case started off with such drama, especially considering that Meg had very little to show for it. Perhaps Connor would have some good news for her when she returned to Richard’s house. After all, even though the eagle-eye spell she had cast earlier had yielded no results, the forensic side of the case was beyond even her magical abilities.
Surely by now the medical examiner had made some kind of findings at the scene of the crime. Meg was interested in hearing them. She drove back to Richard’s house, fully expecting that Connor would have more information at his disposal.
Before Meg could get an update on the case, a large roadblock stood in her way.
When Connor spotted Meg approaching Richard Dotson’s garage, he met up with her in the driveway before she had a chance to reach the garage.
“Meg, what are you doing back here?” Connor asked.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” Meg replied.
It was hardly the first time that Meg had decided to play amateur sleuth. Her investigation of murder cases was practically old hat by then, as was her unblemished record of bringing killers to justice. While she believed that her investigative skills spoke for themselves, with each new case that was opened, there was a certain tension in the air between her and her boyfriend.
In Connor’s ideal world, Meg would leave the investigation to him. At the same time, there was no denying that it was far from an ideal world. Deep down, they both knew that she could help with this case. The question became, was Connor willing to admit that freely? Or would he need convincing?
“You’re thinking about investigating this case, aren’t you?” Connor asked.
Meg made her stance crystal clear. “I’m not thinking about it. I’m doing it.”
Connor looked deep into his girlfriend’s eyes. That was when he saw an unmistakable resolve that showed no sign of wavering.
“You aren’t going to take no for an answer, are you?” he replied.
“Do I ever?”
“No.”
Meg and Connor had been in this position before. In the past, he had tried reasoning with her. He had also done his fair share of arguing with her. Not surprisingly, it had all been fruitless.
Perhaps that was why, right then, in the moment of truth, Connor put up no fight. Instead, he just took a deep breath.
“All right,” he said.
Meg was relieved that she didn’t have to expend any energy arguing with her boyfriend. After all, with this case still in its infancy, she would need all the energy she could muster to solve Richard’s murder.
“Good,” she replied. “I’m glad we have that settled.”
“That’s pretty much the only thing that is settled right now,” he said.
“Does that mean that your team hasn’t been able to uncover much useful information?”
He grimaced. “Unfortunately, all we really have right now are the basics.”
“Such as?”
“According to the medical examiner, the time of death was between ten and eleven o’clock last night.”
That detail didn’t sit well with Meg. “Wait a minute. So the body was sitting there in the garage for almost ten hours before my mother found it?”
Connor nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
Meg scratched her forehead. “That’s curious.”
“Are you wondering why Richard’s fiancée wasn’t the one to have discovered the body?”
Meg nodded. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was wondering.”
“I have wondered about that myself.”
“Do you have an answer to that question?”
Connor shook his head. “I am hoping we can get one when we track Bridget Langford down.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “You don’t know where she is?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Do you think she is making a break for it?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “That is still up for debate. I did put out an all-points bulletin out for her, though. Hopefully we’ll get the answer to that soon enough.”
“In the meantime, what else do you have?”
“Not a whole lot. The murder weapon, of course, is the strand of wire that was found around the victim’s neck. Unfortunately, the forensics team hasn’t been able to pull any prints from the wire or any other part of the scene.”
Meg made a desperate grasp for a shred of good news. “Has your team been able to find anything that can help identify the killer?”
“Not yet, but they are still working.”
Meg groaned. “That doesn’t exactly make for the best start to a case.”
Connor grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”
“I guess the good news is that it’s early still.”
Connor nodded. “Yeah. Who knows what will happen when we start questioning suspects?”
Meg’s face filled with determination. “In that case, let’s go make something happen.”
Chapter Seven
After hearing that Bridget Langford was nowhere to be found, Meg had immediately gotten the urge to cast a locator spell. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that without privacy, which was hard to come by at Richard’s house. Not only was there nowhere for Meg to duck away to, but Connor was anxious to get to questioning suspects. That left Meg with no choice but to put the spell on the backburner until an opening presented itself. The problem was that she had no clue when that would be.
All she could do was hope that Bridget hadn’t gone too far away or that the police would get lucky and spot her. She didn’t like having so many question marks hanging in the air, but in this instance, she saw no other choice.
With the locator spell a no-go, Meg focused on the upcoming suspect interview. The investigators’ suspicions took them to the beach, where the seafood restaurant that Richard owned was located.
Erin’s Catch of the Day Restaurant had begun as a joint partnership between Richard and his late wife. Before becoming a restaurateur, Richard had been a lifelong fisherman. Erin, meanwhile, was a trained chef. Together, they made a great team, both professionally and romantically, complementing each other in the best possible ways. Then four years ago, Erin died of a heart attack.
Richard’s life had not been the same since, in more ways than one. There was the obvious grief that had consumed him for the better part of two years after his wife’s passing. But there was more. In the subsequent years since Erin’s unexpected death, competition had sprouted up next door of all places, in the form of David Rolston. He had opened a rival seafood joint that was giving Erin’s some steep competition.
While Erin’s was a place with aging décor and a static menu, David’s restaurant was sleek, new, and not afraid to take culinary chances. The menu was constantly changing but always managed to find new ways to fuse seafood, pasta, and comfort food into unique dishes.
If the external competition from David Rolston wasn’t bad enough, there was strife within Richard Dotson’s own restaurant. His daughter, Vanessa Dotson, believed that the restaurant should keep its traditional roots and honor her mother’s legacy. That put her in direct conflict with Bridget Langford, who believed that the restaurant needed to adapt with the times and revamp both the menu and décor in order to better compete with David Rolston’s place.
Vanessa’s and Bridget’s differences in philosophy had really heated up recently when Bridget had become engaged to Vanessa’s father. Vanessa wasn’t sure what she was less interested in, having a new stepmother or watching Vanessa’s managerial i
deas gain increased traction in her father’s mind.
Connor and Meg went to the restaurant to see how hot things really had gotten in the kitchen leading up to Richard’s murder. Meg couldn’t help but be overcome with a wave of emotions as she set foot in the restaurant. She had been there many times before, but this was undeniably different than the rest.
The same could not be said about the décor. Some people would call the place rustic. Others would say it was outdated. One thing was undeniable—the wood-beam walls, nautical props, and the cheesy uniforms had not changed over the years, for better or for worse. At that moment, it seemed like it was for worse. The place was devoid of customers.
That wasn’t terribly surprising to Meg. What came as a bigger surprise was that the place was even open in the first place. If one of Meg’s family members had been murdered, she would have closed the place indefinitely. Apparently, the Dotson family operated on a different belief system.
The investigators headed back to the kitchen, where they spotted Richard’s daughter in the back office. Vanessa was a round woman in her late thirties who looked like she had indulged in too many second helpings of her own food over the years. She wore a white chef uniform and had tucked her long black hair under her chef’s hat.
When Vanessa heard the investigators’ footsteps, she turned in their direction. “I’m sorry, but this is a private area. You can’t be back here.”
Vanessa stopped herself when she realized that she wasn’t receiving just any random visitors but rather one very familiar one. While Meg liked to have a sense of detachment when speaking with a murder suspect, in this case, it was impossible.
Even though Meg didn’t count Vanessa as one of her close friends, they had known each other for years and had always gotten along when their parents had barbecues or other group functions in the past.
That being said, Vanessa and Meg ran in different social circles, preventing them from ever becoming terribly close. Even so, they knew each other well enough that Meg didn’t want to believe that Vanessa could ever have killed her father. At the same time, Meg couldn’t let their familiarity get in the way of her finding out the truth.
That was easier said than done.
Vanessa appeared to be having difficulty of her own, mostly in trying to figure out why Meg and, more importantly, Connor were in her kitchen.
“Meg? What are you doing here?” Vanessa replied.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry about what happened to your father,” Meg said.
Vanessa had difficulty containing her emotions. She looked to be on the verge of tears. “Yeah. This is the second worst day of my life.”
Meg didn’t need to ask her what was the worst. That spot clearly belonged to the day that Vanessa’s mother had died.
Meg’s emotions began swelling up on her in response to Vanessa’s heartfelt reply.
“I can imagine. You must be completely devastated,” Meg replied.
Vanessa nodded. “I am.”
“That’s why I can’t help but wonder why you’re here today. I mean, if ever there is a day to close the restaurant, I would think it would be today.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I thought about closing the place.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Vanessa explained her rationale. “I thought that doing some work might distract me from what had happened. That if I kept my mind busy, maybe I wouldn’t spend the whole day thinking about losing my father.”
“Has it worked?” Meg asked.
Vanessa shook her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So am I.”
The conversation was even tougher than Meg thought it would be. Even more, she hadn’t even gotten to the tricky subject matter yet.
Meg took a deep breath before getting into the heart of the issue. “I hate to bring this up right now, but we’re trying to figure out who did this to your dad. Do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”
Vanessa was quick to respond to that question. “I can think of a few people.”
“Such as?”
“Try everyone in my family.”
“Everyone?”
Vanessa let out a sigh. “Unfortunately. Both Trevor and Neil were not on the best of terms with my father recently.”
Hearing Vanessa call both of her brothers out was not a surprise to Meg. The Dotson siblings had never really gotten along all that well. What gave Meg the biggest pause was a name that had been omitted from Vanessa’s list.
“What about Bridget?” Meg asked.
Fire came to Vanessa’s eyes. “Bridget is not family.”
Vanessa’s distaste for her father’s fiancée was evident. Her reaction made Meg’s next question easier to ask.
Meg had been worrying about how to bring Bridget’s and Vanessa’s feud up during the conversation, but with Vanessa’s response, Meg knew exactly how to proceed.
“It must have been tough having to work side by side with Vanessa every day,” Meg said.
“What was tough was seeing that woman wrap my father around her finger. I couldn’t believe that Dad let her weasel her way into his heart.”
Vanessa’s emotions were so raw. She didn’t even try to hide her contempt. It was pretty stunning.
Meg continued hunting for information. “I heard she wanted to change things around here.”
“I don’t even want to talk about that. It makes me crazy even thinking about it.”
“Yeah. I imagine Bridget wanting to turn your mother’s décor and menu upside down would be a dicey topic.”
Vanessa scoffed. “That’s an understatement. It was a real sore spot around here.”
“With just you or your father as well?”
“With both of us.”
“Did Bridget and your father argue a lot about that?”
Vanessa nodded.
“Do you have any idea if they argued about that last night?” Meg asked.
Vanessa shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t here yesterday. It was my day off.”
“Did you do anything interesting? Did you hit the town or see a movie or something?” Meg asked.
Vanessa shook her head. “No. I just hung around my apartment relaxing and binge-watching some TV.”
“So you didn’t leave your apartment all day?”
“No.”
“Sounds like a real lazy day. Did you have any friends over when you were binge-watching TV?”
Vanessa shook her head again. “It was just my dog and me.”
“I always tell myself I’m going to take a day to veg out, but I never seem to do it.”
“You should give it a try,” Vanessa said.
Connor had been content to hang back and let Meg take the lead for most of the interview. As the discussion took on too much of a lighthearted conversational tone for him, he stepped in.
“When was the last time you talked to your father?” Connor asked.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Vanessa replied.
“I thought you said you didn’t leave your apartment.”
“I didn’t. He called me on the phone.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We started off talking about work stuff, but then the conversation veered into some family matters.”
“What kind of family matters?” Connor asked.
“He was upset by the recent conversations he’d had with my brothers,” Vanessa replied.
“Why? What did your brothers say to him to get under his skin?”
“They had both hit him up for money recently.”
“How much money?”
“A lot,” Vanessa said. “Thousands of dollars.”
“Did he give it to them?” Connor replied.
“No.”
“Was it because he didn’t have the money or because he just didn’t want to give it to them?”
“He just didn’t w
ant to give it to them.”
“Why not?” Connor said.
“My father didn’t want to give Neil money because he was tired of enabling his gambling addiction.”
“And your other brother, Trevor?”
“He was not a fan of Trevor’s girlfriend nor Trevor’s aspiring music career, so the fact that Trevor and Fiona were looking for money to record an album together did not go over well with my father,” Vanessa said.
“I imagine not,” Meg replied.
“How did your brothers respond to hearing no?” Connor asked.
“Not well.”
“Did your father mention them threatening him in any way?”
“No,” she replied.
Connor came at his questioning from a different angle. “Given your father’s wealth, your brothers would no doubt stand to inherit a significant amount of money now. Do you think your brothers wanted money so much they would be willing to kill for it?”
Vanessa’s eyebrows rose. “That’s too awful to even think about.”
Connor was determined to get an answer out of her. “I’m sorry. Is that a no?”
She wavered back and forth. “I’m not sure.”
Before Connor was able to fire another question her way, Vanessa became overcome with emotions.
“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling so hot right now. You don’t need anything more from me, do you?” Vanessa asked.
Connor wasn’t ready to end the conversation yet. “Just one more thing.”
Vanessa looked dismayed to see the discussion continuing.
“When was the last time you were at your father’s house?” Connor asked.
Vanessa searched her mind. “I don’t know. It’s been a while. We usually just see each other at work,” Vanessa replied. “Why are you asking?”
Connor looked deep into her eyes. “I’m just curious.”
“Right. Well, I need to go to the ladies’ room to freshen up. I hope you find out who did this to my father,” Vanessa said.
Meg nodded. “So do we.”
Chapter Eight
Meg left the restaurant wrestling with a flurry of mixed emotions. That had been one of the most wrenching interviews she had ever been a part of. She took a deep breath to calm herself down but became embroiled in a whole new set of drama as Connor pulled her aside.
Witch Cozy Mystery Nine Book Set Page 43
