Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set Read online

  Make no mistake, just because he co-owned a business doesn’t mean he’d gone corporate. He was anything but polished in his business approach and had a salty attitude that didn’t lend itself to customer service. That’s why he and Mark made such a good team. Tyler handled the behind the scenes matters while Mark and his schmooze-heavy personality handled the customers.

  With Mark gone, Tyler looked out of place behind the counter. Even more, he seemed wildly uninterested in making an effort to change his surly ways.

  Going in, I knew this would be like trying to thaw a glacier. Still, I had to try. I began with the most basic of icebreakers, a warm smile.

  “Hi.”

  Tyler gave me a cockeyed look, as if he was befuddled why a woman like me would ever set foot in a shack like this.

  “You lost?” he asked.

  “No. I actually came here to see you.”

  He looked me up and down again with a piercing stare that made me feel like I was under a microscope. If anything, instead of warming him up a little, my response only made him even more wary of me.

  “You’re not some no good tax auditor or nothing, are you?” he replied.

  I wanted to assuage his fears as quickly as possible. “No.”

  He seemed relieved, like he’d been dreading a visit from a government suit for some time. After assuring him that I wasn’t a civil servant, he wasn’t nearly as aggressive with me but did still look at me with a great deal of continued skepticism.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  I couldn’t get over how brusque he was. It was so off-putting. And this was before he found out that I’d come to interview him as a suspect in Mark’s murder. Things were poised to get much worse.

  While I’d taken a purposefully confrontational approach with Kristal, I was trying to thaw Tyler out as best as I could. If I kept at it, maybe I’d finally have some luck.

  “I heard about what happened with Mark.”

  Tyler narrowed his eyes, more suspicious of my presence than ever. “Yeah.”

  He gave me as little to work with as possible. That was barely more than a grunt. Getting info out of him would be like trying to pull teeth with a pair of pliers.

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “Who’s asking?” he asked.

  That put me in a tight spot. The old adage about the truth hurting had never been more true. In this case, telling the truth wouldn’t just hurt my chances of getting the information I needed, it would be a total conversation killer. He was already tight-lipped. If I told him I was just some former actress turned animal shelter owner who took up sleuthing to help a friend, I most likely wouldn’t be able to get another word out of him.

  My only other choice was to lie to him. I hated to do it, but extreme situations called for extreme actions. Luckily, I found the perfect one.

  “Detective Sassy,” I said. I threw a question his way before he thought to ask to see a police badge. “How did you hear about Mark’s death?”

  “He didn’t show up for his shift this morning, so I drove by his place. That’s when I saw the police cars out front and knew something awful had gone down.”

  “It’s very unfortunate what happened to him.”

  “He had it coming,” Tyler replied.

  Did he not realize he was a suspect in this case? If he didn’t, that was his loss because he’d just given me some serious fodder to work with. I was almost stunned at what I’d just heard. It wasn’t often leads like this got dropped into a sleuth’s lap.

  “Oh, really? How did he have it coming?” I asked.

  “That’s what happens when you mess around with too many women at the same time.”

  “So, you think one of his exes did this?” I said.

  He nodded. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “You say that, but do you have any proof of it?”

  “There are some things you just know.”

  “Can you be a little more specific? You told me that Mark messed around with too many women at the same time, but which one do you think killed him?”

  “It was that last one he was with, Paige Richardson.”

  I had to admit, hearing Paige’s name in the context of a murder suspect again made my skin crawl. It hit far too close to home for my taste. I tried to shrug off my personal feelings and focus on finding out the truth.

  “What makes you think that?” I said.

  “She loved him. I mean, really loved him with all her heart. But he didn’t treat her right, and when a man doesn’t treat a woman right, bad things happen.”

  “What about Kristal Stanton?”

  He furrowed his brow. “What about her?”

  “Mark didn’t treat her right either, and I heard she was the crazy ex-girlfriend type.”

  “I can’t disagree with you there. Even now, all this time after Mark broke up with her, Kristal still seemed like she was hung up on him.”

  “What makes you say that she was still hung up on Mark?” I asked.

  “She kept coming in here every day, even after Mark got with Paige Richardson. Kristal didn’t take no for an answer. She was like a crazed boat captain obsessed with a whale she could never catch.”

  “Yet you still think Paige did this?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Nothing hurts more than a fresh wound.”

  It was time to turn things around on him. “You’re spending a lot of time pointing fingers at Paige, but what about you?”

  He stared me down. “What about me?”

  “Where were you last night between eleven and midnight?” I asked.

  “I was here.”

  “At work?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  I turned around and pointed at the door. “The sign says that the shop closes at five.”

  He kept to his story, with one little addendum. “I was working late.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Really late, it sounds like.”

  He raised his voice as his tenuous grip on his temper began slipping. “There’s no crime against that.”

  If I was going to get anywhere with this case, I’d need to start getting into specifics. “What were you working on?”

  He was really making me work for it, giving me the vaguest and least descriptive answer he possibly could. “Business stuff.”.

  “You mean, trying to turn around the business?”

  He sneered. “What are you getting at?”

  “I know you and Mark were having some pretty bitter disagreements about what direction to take the business in.”

  He dismissed me outright like I was a crazy person talking to the moon. “So what? I didn’t kill him. I was here at the time of the murder. I just told you that.”

  I scanned the shop and confirmed my own theory. “You don’t happen to have security cameras here, do you?”

  He didn’t seem to follow my logic. “Do you know how much those things cost? Besides, who is going to rob a bait and tackle shop?”

  “I meant, it’s a shame that you don’t have security cameras in here because they could have verified your story. Without any video proof, all you have to go on is your word.”

  “A fisherman’s word means everything. Besides, I told you the one to watch out for is Paige Richardson.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me, but like everything you’ve said, you don’t have any proof. Right now it’s just your word against hers.”

  He slammed his fist down on the counter. “What, you’re going to take the word of a bitter ex-girlfriend instead of me?”

  A dangerous line had been crossed. When the conversation began, Tyler was just grumpy. From there, he’d moved on to outraged. This was beyond that. He’d veered off the cliff of sanity. There was a crazed look in his eyes like he’d turned into a rabid animal.

  It didn’t take an expert camper to know not to poke an angry bear. If I didn’t want things to turn grisly, I needed to find an alternate way to get the information I was after.
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  He continued. “We’re done here.”

  I stood my ground. “No. Becky Campbell was just fired yesterday. Why?”

  He was terse once again. “Insubordination.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  He was at the end of his fuse. My only saving grace was that this confrontation was occurring in the shop he owned. Theoretically, a customer could come in at any time. While that was unlikely, given the shop’s lack of recent sales, it was still enough of a deterrent to keep him from completely unloading on me.

  While going ballistic on me was out of the question, snarling was not.

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  I kept pressing, inching closer to wearing him down completely.

  “Because I don’t know.”

  I folded my arms. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  “Mark was too busy to go into detail with me yesterday. He was going to run down the whole story with me today.”

  For the first time, I saw a different look in his eyes. Throughout the rest of the conversation, he seemed to be hiding something. Now, his eyes were clearer than I’d ever seen them before. That led me to believe two things. First, that he was telling the truth about being in the dark regarding the Becky Campbell firing. Second, that he still had plenty of secrets to hide when it came to everything else.

  If I hadn’t pushed my luck enough already throughout this conversation, I decided to do it once more. “Is that all you have for me?”

  Tyler was grinding his teeth he was so angry. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I meant, are you sticking to your flimsy cover story?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s not just a story. It’s the truth.”

  I could have stayed there all day trying to wear him down, but I felt like I’d already passed the law of diminishing returns. With so many other suspects left to question, I decided to leave before things got even more contentious.

  “We’ll see about that. In the meantime, don’t go leaving town.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Since I was already on the boardwalk, my next logical stop was only a few hundred feet away. Hook, Line, And Savings wasn’t just Tyler and Mark’s local bait shop competition, it was devouring Boardwalk bait and tackle like a great white shark sinking its teeth into easy prey.

  This rival shop, which was sending Boardwalk bait and tackle to a quick and watery grave, was run by Eric Peterson, the charismatic thirtysomething upstart entrepreneur who may or may not also be a murderer. That part was what I was there to find out.

  I didn’t even have to take a step inside Eric’s shop to see that the contrasts between the two businesses were stark. Anyone with half a brain could see why the new bait shop in town was trouncing the competition. Eric’s store seemed to shine a light on all of Boardwalk’s inadequacies.

  The outside was clean and modern, the sign was big and sleek. There was a sophistication to the place, a polish that made a huge difference in its presentation. Eric’s business looked welcoming to families, hobbyists, and professional fishermen alike. By contrast, Tyler’s shack almost dared potential customers to enter at their own peril.

  When I went inside Hook, Line, And Savings, my feelings about the place were just affirmed even more. Despite the fact that they sold inherently messy items such as bait, the place looked clean and orderly and was noticeably odor-free. In addition to the décor and presentation, there was another major point of contrast: the volume of customers. More specifically, Eric’s business actually had them, in great numbers.

  The store was bustling. It was almost too busy for me. I’d gone to Boardwalk bait and tackle first in an attempt to let the crowd thin out here, but that just didn’t happen. While I could have done without Tyler Howard’s sour attitude, the quiet and privacy at Boardwalk afforded me the ability to really hammer him with questions.

  With so many people coming and going here at Hook, Line, And Savings, I’d have to find a way to isolate Eric Peterson to get any information out of him. Hopefully, I could get him to talk to me in the back or outside. But first, I had to track him down.

  Surprisingly, I was greeted with a nice, big, warm smile before I even made it to the front counter. Paul Miller was a friendly clerk with pockmarked skin and great customer service skills.

  “Can I can help you?” he asked.

  I glanced over the clerk’s shoulder, scanning the shop for any sign of the owner, Eric Peterson. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him. Maybe he was in the back. At least, that’s what I hoped.

  “I’m looking for Eric Peterson,” I said.

  Paul scrunched his nose. “I’m sorry. He’s not here.”

  “You mean, he’s not even in the back?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Can you tell me where he is?” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I have no clue, but I can take a message if you’d like.”

  “No, that’s ok.”

  “Are you sure I can’t take a message for you? I’ll make sure he gets it when he returns.”

  “It’s really something I need to talk to him about in person.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you know if he’s expected in today?”

  He had more bad news for me. “He’s actually taken a few days off.”

  My mind immediately began racing. Had he decided to take today off because he knew he was a suspect? This was one of those times when specifics meant everything. “Starting when?”

  “As far as I know, he’s always off on Friday and Saturday. He’s on the schedule for tomorrow, though.”

  Without realizing it, Paul had just given me the answer I was looking for. Not only was Eric off today, but also yesterday. More importantly, it was by design, prescheduled. I wasn’t sure if that helped my case or hurt it. I guess it depended on whether the murder was premeditated or a spur of the moment crime of passion.

  Either way, there was nothing more to get from Paul. It was time to make a hasty exit.

  Chapter Twelve

  Becky Campbell was next on my list of suspects to question. Having been fired from the bait and tackle shop less than twenty-four hours before the murder, her motive was unmistakable: revenge. When people lost their jobs, they got pushed to the brink. Their emotions were raw and unstable, a breeding ground for desperation. Poor decisions almost always followed.

  After getting Becky’s address from Paige, I headed over to the pastel green-colored bungalow she was renting to find out. Unfortunately, as I arrived, I found no car in the driveway. That was not a good start. Things only got worse from there.

  I knocked on the front door but received no answer. After another round of knocks had yielded no response, I peered into one of the front windows of the house. What I saw only confirmed my fears, that she wasn’t home.

  That left me with a big decision to make. It was one thing for Becky not to be home right now. It was another to not have any idea when she’d be back. If I waited, there was a chance I could get lucky and have her return within the hour. There was also the very real possibility that the whole rest of my day could be squandered.

  Time was the one thing I didn’t have enough of right now. With each hour that passed, the odds stacked higher against me. A sleuth’s best chance of solving a murder case was within the first forty-eight hours. After that, the odds got longer and the leads grew cold quickly. That’s why I had to maximize my time.

  Given the fact that there were still a number of other suspects that I’d yet to interview, I decided to move on and come back later.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After striking out at Becky Campbell’s place, I was hoping to have better luck with the next suspect. Unfortunately, I’d kept tripping over unexpected stumbling blocks. With each stop that I made where I didn’t even get to talk to one the suspects, I lost precious time.
Since the killer already had at least a fifteen-hour head start on me, any time I could make up was crucial.

  I prayed that luck would smile on me. Apparently, the universe had a tongue in cheek sense of humor, because what I got instead was a mischievous wink in return. I probably should have known better than to expect a tranquil scene to be waiting for me when I arrived at Celeste Cooper’s house, but as I pulled up, an all-out blitz of drama was unfolding before my eyes.

  It was a baby blue-colored bungalow with a dark gray tiled roof. Two stumpy palm trees stood in the sparsely landscaped yard. Celeste, Mark’s woman on the side, stood on the brick walkway trying to plead with her disgruntled husband, Ryan Cooper.

  In an uncanny fashion, like both Paige Richardson and Kristal Stanton, Celeste was a brunette in her forties with a full-figured body. If this was a Hollywood casting call, they’d all be competing for the same role. Instead, they’d unknowingly been vying for Mark’s heart, only to have theirs broken.

  Conversely, Ryan Cooper looked nothing like Mark Butler. He was nebbish and slight of build, a scrawny fortysomething accountant type with large-framed glasses and a short-sleeved buttoned down blue shirt with a thin black tie.

  While I philosophically disagreed with such morally abhorrent behavior as adultery, as an objective observer, I could see that in picking a muscular, charismatic man like Mark to have an affair with, Celeste had chosen a man who couldn’t share fewer similar traits with her husband.

  Ryan was planted squarely on the doorstep of the house, guarding the front door like his life depended on it. Even as I drove by on the street, the tension between them was palpable.

  Ryan appeared to be turning a deaf ear to his wife, not even yielding an inch, despite all her efforts to look contrite. There was a sizable amount of emotional energy being exerted, all to no avail. It was not an unreasonable assumption to believe that this all stemmed from Ryan finding out about his wife’s affair. Whether my hunch was spot-on was still yet to be determined.

  What was quite evident was that I’d stumbled upon a powder keg that could explode at any moment. My greatest concern was that if I intervened right now, perhaps it would do so in my face. That’s why I decided to watch the rest of the Coopers’ exchange unfurl from a distance, at least for the meantime.