Cozy Christmas Murder Page 7

  When Avery stepped outside, there was a definite chill in the air, and she was glad that she’d finally gotten her car back from the police impound yard. Since it had been impounded as part of an investigation, at least she hadn’t had to pay for it, and her little car was spotless, inside and out. They’d taken everything, even her ancient CD collection, and had vacuumed thoroughly. Glancing at the sky, she wondered absently if the hazy grey clouds above were going to produce any snow.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  Avery particularly loved this time of year, when everyone seemed to have a smile for friends and strangers alike. Stores, dressed out in red and green and all that sparkled, played cheery holiday music, and a sense of giving abounded. Standing in line for coffee at the mall, something slammed into the back of her legs, nearly making her knees buckle. It turned out to be a small boy, with half of a Christmas cookie clenched in one grubby fist.

  “I’m so sorry,” his harried looking mother collared him, while balancing a younger girl on her hip. “We went to see Santa, and he’s obviously had his sugar rush kick in.”

  “No problem,” Avery laughed, glancing down at the bright-eyed child.

  When she got up to the counter, she ordered and paid for her coffee, handing the barista an additional fifteen dollars. Leaning over the counter toward him, she whispered, “That’s for the mom and kids behind me. If there’s anything left over, keep it as a tip.”

  The barista grinned conspiratorially. “Yes, ma’am. You have a happy holiday!”

  “Thanks, you too,” Avery turned and gave a little wave to the busy mom behind her before going to pick up her latte.

  She had three large bags hanging from her wrist, and was carrying a box filled with stocking stuffers for her dad that she’d picked up at the sporting goods store, so when she licked the froth of mint mocha from her upper lip, Avery decided to call it a day, and left the mall. The day was still grey, and much to her delight, when she got outside, the first few flakes of the season’s first snow had begun to fall. Feeling carefree, despite the many things on her mind, she stood on the sidewalk and opened her mouth, catching a few flakes on her tongue.

  “Be careful, those things will kill ya,” a cheerful male voice commented, making her giggle, slightly embarrassed at her childlike behavior.

  She looked up and saw Kerry heading toward her, with his typical affable smile, and something caused her to catch her breath a bit. His hair was mussed from the light breeze, his cheeks and nose were tinged with pink from the cold, and the forest green of his parka made his hazel eyes seem dark, warm and mysterious. She found herself staring, and had to make up something to say quickly.

  “I ordered the sugar-free ones,” she quipped.

  “I bet your coffee doesn’t have anything in it either, huh?” he teased, and she couldn’t help but notice how perfectly white his teeth were.

  What on earth was the matter with her? This was Kerry Sawyer, the preacher’s kid who lived his life how he pleased. He was kind and steady and…at this moment, with the snow falling gently around them, he was sort of adorable.

  “Guilty,” she grinned, trying to keep herself from staring and feeling like a ridiculous schoolgirl.

  “Need some help with those?” he gestured to the packages in her arms.

  “Oh geez, yes. Thank you,” she said, gratefully handing over her purchases.

  “These are all for me, right?” he asked, following her to her car.

  “Every last one,” she chuckled.

  “Hey, I don’t know if you’d be interested, but I help out with the annual Christmas party at the children’s museum, and we could always use another hand,” his voice was a bit muffled over the stack of gifts that he carried.

  “Well, I’m not great around kids or parties, for that matter, but I can make epic holiday punch, and I’m not bad at decorating, even if my mother would disagree, so if you need some help behind the scenes, I might be able to do that. When is it?”

  “Friday. We can go out and get a drink to recover afterwards,” he grinned.

  “Let me make sure that my parents haven’t already made plans for me, and if not, I’m in,” they reached her car and she unlocked the trunk.

  “Wow, that’s literally the cleanest trunk I’ve ever seen,” Kerry commented, placing her gifts carefully inside.

  “The perks of having your car cleaned out by Champaign’s boys in blue,” she rolled her eyes.

  “Huh? Sounds like a story there,” Kerry was confused. He hadn’t heard about her car being impounded.

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” she promised, slamming the trunk shut and moving around to the driver’s side to unlock her door. “Thanks for the help.”

  She tilted her head up to smile at him, and was pleasantly startled to realize how close he was standing. Their eyes met and the expression in his softened. He leaned toward her, and her phone chirped, indicating that a text had just come in.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide. She didn’t know how to react and handled the situation by pulling her phone out of her purse and staring at the new text. It took her a second before she could read the words because she was so rattled by what had almost happened, and when she did, she gasped.

  “Oh gosh, Kerry, that’s from my mom. I need to get home,” Avery practically dove in the car.

  “Text me later?” he asked, his expression unreadable.

  “Of course,” she nodded and he closed the door.

  **

  Vaughn Marsh had been a cop long enough to have pretty good instincts when it came to pinpointing suspects, but this case had him baffled. He knew that it wasn’t just a random killing, the crime scene had told him that much, but there were so many candidates for the murderer, that he was having a bit of a difficult time narrowing it down.

  The obvious first suspect, the spouse, had a rock-solid alibi – he’d been out of the country on business, and a quick review of his bank accounts didn’t reveal any lump sum transactions that would indicate that he’d hired someone to kill his wife and frame a mystery writer for the crime.

  Rosanne Nelson, while well-known about town, hadn’t been very well liked, so it was feasible that any number of people could have been her killer. She’d made enemies in every facet of Champaign society, and some of them were quite outspoken about it.

  Deedee Benning had been on the receiving end of Rosanne’s wrath for nearly twenty years, which meant that she’d been effectively blackballed from many charitable organizations, social events and business opportunities, thanks to the tangled web of suspicious allies that Rosanne had cultivated. The bubbly blonde could easily have sent the pink roses to herself, just to freak Avery out and throw her off the trail, but she didn’t seem to have the cunning necessary for planning out such an act, and there didn’t seem to be a vindictive bone in her body. She’d not made any uncomplimentary comments about the victim in public venues, and had always handled Rosanne’s barbs and slights with grace.

  Janet Halstead had been hostile toward both Rosanne and the police from the very beginning, and there had been a scarf, with Rosanne’s blood on it outside her door, but none of Janet’s DNA or fingerprints had been found on or near the scene, and Rosanne’s husband hadn’t recognized the scarf as belonging to his wife. In fact, the only fingerprints that had been at the scene belonged to Avery, because the body had been found resting against her car.

  Vaughn had no doubt that the award-winning mystery author was intelligent enough to pull off a murder, and the fact that the sequence of events mirrored the plot in one of her books cast an even bigger shadow of guilt over the author. She was smart, she knew how to conceal evidence, and she had been treated badly by the victim just before the murder. All of these things pointed toward Avery as being the killer, and then there was the note.

  The note that had been tucked into Rosanne’s lifeless hand was chilling, and definitely pointed toward Avery.

  “She Rose to the occasion, to
stop the Violets.” It had read. Vaughn Marsh had known about the tie-in to Avery’s book, Prone to Violets, before she’d told him about it, because he’d done a search on keywords from the note, along with her name, and found the book. But something inside him just couldn’t quite accept that Avery Sanders was the killer. The method had been brutal, and the ferocity of it had made it seem like a crime of passion. He surmised that if Avery had elected to put such thought into a murder, it would’ve been much more clinical and precise.

  Nothing was adding up in this case. Vaughn tossed his pen down in frustration and his partner, Dan came jogging across the station with a determined look on his face.

  “Saddle up,” Dan directed. “We’ve got something in the Rosanne Nelson case.”

  “It’s about time. What’ve we got?” Marsh stood and stretched, his joints popping.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Dan tossed over his shoulder as they hurried to the squad car.

  **

  By the time Avery got home, the police were already sitting in the living room with her mom and dad. She flushed, feeling guilty, when Vaughn Marsh studied her as she came in the door. She hated the way that he scrutinized her and made her feel like a criminal.

  “Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Doris jumped up and hugged her.

  “I’m fine, Mom. What happened?”

  “I went out to get the mail and I found that on the porch,” her mother pointed at some sort of card, contained in an evidence envelope on the coffee table.

  “What is it?” Avery squinted, trying to make out the writing through the plastic.

  “It’s Rosanne Nelson’s driver’s license,” Vaughn said, without expression. “Care to tell us how it got here?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, yes, I have a theory, if you’d like to listen to it,” Avery shot back, resenting his patronizing attitude. She’d had enough of being treated with suspicion.

  “Oh honey, I’m sure that the police know what they’re doing,” Doris began, but Vaughn held up a hand to stop her.

  “No, I’d love to hear this,” he said, with just a shade of sarcasm.

  Avery gave him a look, then took off her coat, set it on the couch and sat down beside it. Her father looked intrigued, her mother looked as though she might just pass out, and Vaughn, as usual, looked skeptical.

  “I think I know who killed Rosanne. There are only a handful of people who could’ve done all the weird things that have been happening, and the one thing that I haven’t figured out yet is the motive, but I’m sure once I walk you through what I’ve got, you may have some insight into that,” she began, sounding far more confident than she felt.

  “And this is all due to your extensive experience in law enforcement?” Vaughn asked dryly.

  Avery chose to ignore the jibe. “I write mysteries, it makes me pick up on details. Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “No need to be rude to the police, honey,” Doris chided, looking appalled.

  “Please, continue,” the cop gestured magnanimously.

  “Thank you. Now, I’ll admit…I kind of suspected Kerry at first, but the only time he was away from me after we left the bar was when he went to the restroom, and he wasn’t gone long enough to have gone all the way back to the alley, murdered Rosanne and come back to the diner, so it couldn’t have been him,” Avery looked Vaughn in the eye to make sure that he was paying attention. He was. Her mother sat staring, mouth slightly agape as she listened to her daughter.

  “So then I started thinking about who might’ve done it and all sorts of weird coincidences that have been happening lately, and I think the path only leads to one place.”

  “Weird coincidences?” her father frowned.

  “Yep, like…the timing of things for example. We live in a pretty busy neighborhood. Someone had to have either lived close, or have been watching our house very carefully to know when to drop off the box with the necklace in it on our front porch, without the neighbors noticing.”

  “Yes, the thought of a murderer on my porch just makes me sick,” Doris nodded, listening raptly. “I usually know when someone comes to the door, but this sick soul slipped up here and away again without me seeing them.”

  “Right,” Avery nodded. “And the same thing goes for leaving the rose in my car. Someone who knew where I was going to be, and when, put it there. The only people who knew that I was going to be at Himalaya Grill with Linda, were Janet and Shelly. I knew that Shelly had a sick child, so I didn’t really suspect her, and when I started asking around about Janet, I found out some pretty interesting things.”

  “Such as?” Vaughn interrupted, the skeptical look mostly gone.

  “She was a member of the zoning board that turned down Rosanne’s husband’s petition, for one thing.”

  “That’s not conclusive,” the cop dismissed her.

  “Of course not,” Avery fought hard to not roll her eyes. “But it pointed me in that direction. Until I started putting the pieces together.”

  “And what pieces did you put together?” she had the cop’s attention again, but the skeptical look had resurfaced.

  “Let’s go in chronological order. First, Rosanne’s necklace was on the porch. Shortly after the necklace was found, since I didn’t recognize the significance of it, and I was battling writer’s block, I went for a walk to clear my head. While on my walk, I encountered Linda Brown. She was coming back from the library, but she was headed in the wrong direction to get from the library to her house, which wouldn’t have mattered at all if I hadn’t seen what I saw in her bike basket.”

  “Books?” Vaughn guessed.

  “Exactly,” Avery nodded.

  “Well, that backs up her story,” the cop commented.

  “Yes, except for the other things that I saw in her basket.”

  “Which were?” Vaughn sighed.

  “Rose petals.”

  That got his attention.

  “What color?” he demanded.

  “Pink.”

  “Seems a bit suspicious, but there could be a logical explanation other than murder,” Vaughn commented.

  “I thought so too, until the next event,” Avery agreed.

  “Which was?”

  “Dinner at the Himalaya Grill. We had just started eating when Linda’s phone buzzed. She read a text and said that she had to go call her mother and that she’d be back in a few minutes. I got on social media so that I wouldn’t have to just sit there, and I had completely finished my meal before she got back. When Linda came back in, I asked her if everything was okay, and she said that her mother was in the hospital for pneumonia, but that she’d be fine.”

  “Sounds plausible, but when I called another classmate of ours who is a nurse there, I asked her to check on Linda’s mom for me and she said that they had no record of her being admitted. I came out after dinner and the rose was in the car.”

  “I’m assuming you have more,” Vaughn said noncommittally.

  “Of course I do. The flowers that Deedee Benning received weren’t from her husband.”

  “The card attached would indicate otherwise,” the cop raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, but when I spoke with Deedee about it later, she said that her husband swore up and down that he didn’t send them. I ask you, what man in his right mind would deny having given his wife flowers?”

  “Nobody, no how,” her dad chimed in.

  “Exactly,” Avery smiled at her father, then turned back to Vaughn Marsh. “Linda sent the flowers because she knew that I was going to be there and she wanted to freak me out.”

  “And how do you know that, aside from Mr. Benning’s denial?”

  “I asked her which florist the flowers were sent from and I went in to buy flowers. I asked the florist to check and see if there was a specific type of flower that wasn’t in the case. When she went to the back room, I looked in her order book and saw who had sent the flowers to Deedee.”

  “You saw Linda Brown’s n
ame on the list?” Vaughn seemed surprised.

  “No, I saw the name of the character from my book, Violet Martin. Linda is a bookworm, she always has been, and she loves my books.”

  “Which proves nothing,” the cop ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You do realize you’re bordering on interfering in an investigation?” he challenged.

  “Someone had to start digging,” Avery shot back. “I am not about to continue having you look at me like a criminal, even if I have to solve the case myself.”

  “Are you done?” Vaughn drawled.

  “No. Then there’s the scarf.”

  “What about the scarf?” he humored her.

  Avery hoped like crazy that he was realizing the validity of her points.

  “It was pink with yellow butterflies…” she began.

  “And how do you know this?”

  “Because I asked Janet. Anyway, the outfit that Rosanne was wearing that night was navy and red. She’d never in a million years put on a scarf that didn’t match her outfit, even if it kept her warm, and this scarf wasn’t warm, it was decorative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in pink either.”

  “Is that it?”

  “As far as I can remember. If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  Vaughn studied her for a minute, then took a breath and spoke, his tone a bit kinder this time.

  “So, assuming that your hypothesis is correct…if Linda Brown killed Rosanne Nelson, what would have been the motive?”

  “I have no idea,” Avery shrugged. “I really don’t know Linda that well. When we were in school, she used to volunteer at the animal shelter, and she had about a thousand cats. She got good grades and loved to read.”

  “Animal shelter?” Vaughn repeated.

  “Yep, she loved animals.”

  Vaughn and his partner exchanged a look.

  “What?” Doris asked, sitting on the edge of her seat.